In they pour, one after another, cheerily thudding on to the doormat: ‘Thank you for insuring with us again! Now, pay us more than you earn in a year!’ Yes, it’s insurance premium renewal time – and they’re shooting up once more.
Insurance premiums have swollen unstoppably, expanding upwards for all the world like a batch of evil mushrooms. In our household, home insurance alone now comes in at the same size as a monthly mortgage payment. Whack on to this car insurance (necessary), pet insurance (necessary?) and health insurance (in this day and age, yes), and you’d have to be earning the annual equivalent of Andorra’s GDP. What are we even doing? Shoving quantities of moolah (already diminished by the taxman) out to insurance companies, on the off-chance of an accident? You might as well put it all on a nag at Newmarket.
Yes, yes, I know why the practice of insurance began, back in the days of yore. It made sense then. You had your boat, you had your cargo of apes and ivories, and if it sank on the way back to the home port, you got your money anyway and didn’t have to farm your children out to the workhouse. And yes, it’s good for drivers to be insured in case of accidents (although we all leave bumps and scratches on the bodywork because we don’t want the premium to go up). And I know, too, that insurance companies really are taking a risk (most of the time), as demonstrated by the Lloyd’s Names disaster in the 1990s, where billions of pounds were forked out because of asbestos and pollution claims in the United States.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in