These days, you can get insured for almost anything and the world wide web has in part produced a highly transparent and competitive market place for insurer services. Some insurance is required by law such as car insurance or medical insurance in some countries. Other insurance although optional in law is viewed by most people as a ‘must have’ such as home contents insurance or insurance for a person’s business interests or property belonging to their business. There is then another type of product aimed with the needs of consumers in mind which is more specialised such as motorbike insurance, wedding insurance or certain types of extreme sports insurance. Either in the high street or on the internet, companies offer varying rates and excesses dependant on many different things. There also exists a secondary market where insurance brokers sell their services who act as agents buying products at the behest of their consumer or corporate clients. Underwriters are another group of agents operating in the insurance industry.
Underwriting is basically where the risk to the insurer and other risks are calculated and the underwriter determines the premium and cost of the insurance or whether the agreement is viable at all. An example from auto insurance the underwriter would take a detailed look at a drivers accident record. Another example might be medical insurance where the patients health is taken into account. The internet certainly helps the insurance marke maintain its competitiveness and transparency but some customers are still finding themselves uninsured in times of emergency. Extreme winter sports insurance demonstrates this well. It is reported that more than 50% of travelers to ski resorts travel without insurance and although the other half do, only a quarter of them are actually covered for skiing and snowboarding which are classed by most insurers as ‘extreme sports’ and not included in their basic cover.
In the main, European travellers also think that their E111 is adequate to get them treatment but this is not the case in most resorts. A very recent example of how the market is changing is the furious competition on price between rival providers of auto insurance that has been in the main facilitated by the mass uptake and use of price comparison sites. We have to buy car insurance as a matter of law so It simply must be bought by every individual with a car. This causes pricing to be the chief competitive factor. A recent example of a failure in the travel insurance market was when payment protection insurance policies (PPI’s) were uncovered by the FSA to be negligent drafted or having been missold to many customers. This has lead to a huge amount of litigation and firms actually being set up for the single purpose of acting as agents by which customers can claim back any PPI that is covered by the FSA’s investigations. A further dubious insurance product is internet security insurance that claims to refund the subject for any loss as a result of cyber fraud or identity theft. However many people are unaware that the bank is more than likely liable for such acts.
