The UK Insurance Blog

In a post on his pet lovers blog, Gary Bogue has picked up on some statistics from a Californian pet insurance company that has analyzed their claim statistics to find the major causes of poisoning in our pets.

The article makes great reading and I guarantee that you’d never have guessed the single largest cause of pet poisoning, in fact it accounts for more claims than all of the other causes combined…it’s drug overdose !. It’s caused by well-meaning, kindly pet owners giving their pets human medications, typically pain relief remedies. It seems that most pets can’t metabolise even small doses of this type of medicine and a drugs overdose is a frequent result.

The other causes of pet poisoning are less surprising, with things such as rodent poisons, chocolate, poisonous plants, slug and snail bait etc all contributing to visits to the vet.

It’s a good article and a stern reminder to pay extra care with poisons around the home together with a stark warning that giving your pet medication intended for humans can have tragic consequences.

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If you’ve read any of my earlier blog posts or you’ve taken a look at the insurance web site you will have seen my advice to shop around for insurance and not take the easy way out by renewing with your current insurer.

So a couple of weeks back I received my car insurance renewal from Tesco. It’s paid by direct debit, so the easy way out is to do nothing and let it carry on. Struck by a feeling of guilt at contemplating renewal with Tesco, I did the honourable thing and got online quotes from some other insurers.

I’ve been with Tesco for a few years now, when I took out the policy they were ultra-competitive and I couldn’t see any reason why this would have changed. The renewal quote of £315.00 for fully comp insurance, £55.65 for my protected no-claims bonus and £95.55 for breakdown insurance all looked reasonable to me, giving a grand total of £466.20.

You can imagine my surprise when a quote from More Th>n came to £298.60 for exactly the same options. I don’t have the figures to hand but each of the three components was cheaper and even the cost of spreading the payments over the year was charged at 13.7% APR rather than the 23.6% APR charged by Tesco.

The regular advice is to compare the policy options between the providers in order to confirm that you’re comparing like with like and I’ve done that. The other advice often handed out is that you should take into account the service offered by the various companies. Trouble was that I’d never claimed either on the motor insurance or the breakdown insurance, so how was I to know how I’d have been treated ?.

The change from Tesco to More Th>n was very simple, I only had to give my Tesco policy number for them to confirm my no-claim discount and that was that. I saved over 30% on what I considered to be a competitive car insurance policy by simply getting a few more quotes.

Figures published today show that British Airways, our so-called ‘National Airline’ loses 2.65% of all the baggage checked onto it’s aircraft. Now I appreciate that I’m not a B.A. fan (I don’t think that I’ve ever had a completely trouble free long-haul flight with them), but surely that’s a frightening figure. It means that on each and every full 747 flight there will be around 14 bags that will disappear en route. It seems that amongst the European airlines only TAP, Portugal’s national airline, has a slightly worse record with 2.78% of the checked luggage disappearing.

I guess that I must be a hard customer to please. As I said, I’m no lover of B.A., I’ve been on flights with no food, no drink, all the fuel in one wing (luckily they noticed before trying to take off), oh and once they must have put too much fuel in because we were sitting on the end of the runway at Edinburgh airport and the wheels were gradually sinking into the melting tarmac…it was a hot day !!.

I’m a keen fisherman and have taken a few trips to Canada over the last 6 or 7 years. I’ve flown Air Canada a few times but they’re not much better. No TV in the back of the seat and once when running late and arriving at Heathrow to find that their docking place had been given to somebody else it took them 30 minutes to find a set of stairs to let us off the plane. You can imagine what a plane load of late passengers thought about that after a 9 hour flight.

I’ve had a few uneventful transatlantic flights with American Airlines, biggest problem with them is that the window seats have a bloody great air conditioner box under the seat in front and it makes it impossible to stretch your legs. Plus there’s the American thing of “are you sure that you should be having that 2nd beer?”. YES…I’m SURE, now do your bloody job and stop being stupid !!.

No, my vote has to go to Virgin. I had one very bad experience when Richard Branson wandered around the cabin and asked me if I’d like his autograph !. WTF, I politely declined his kind offer. Apart from that they’ve been good to me.

The moral of this disconnected rant ?…if you’re flying with British Airways make absolutely sure that you have good travel insurance !!.

There’s an article on the Sky News website discussing an AA report on the increase in uninsured drivers. It seems that the total number of cars seized by the police because of no insurance rose from 78,000 in 2006 to 150,000 in 2007, with 40% of cars seized not reclaimed.

Maybe, just maybe the police with their car mounted cameras are winning the battle but there still seems to be big loopholes for the criminals to avoid buying insurance. Apart from the ‘Chancers’ who just hope that they don’t get caught, there are at least two other common groups.

The first are the people that either don’t register their vehicle, or register it at a fictitious address. These people get away with thousands of pounds worth of parking fines and congestion charge payments but they won’t gat away with driving without insurance if they get caught by a police camera car.

It seems that another dodge is to put foreign number plates on your car. The police computer doesn’t keep a record of foreign registered vehicles in use on UK roads, so people driving on foreign plates are not likely to be caught. Next time you see a right hand drive car with foreign plates ask yourself how that could happen, since we’re about the only country left that drives on the “proper” side of the road. Let’s hope that the police have a similar thought and hopefully a swift purge will sort out a few of these criminals.

I came across an interesting piece in the Burnham & Highbridge Weekly News where the MD of the insurance comparison website confused.com was quoted as saying

“It is important not to confuse being savvy with being dishonest. Job titles do provide a grey area where the quotes can be ‘massaged’ or legitimately exploited by the consumer, but most other areas of quote criteria are a great deal more rigid and should not be manipulated in the same way.”

She was referring to the discrepancies in car insurance premium depending on someone’s job title. The examples included someone with a job of “bricklayer” pays 17% less than a “builder”, a “TV announcer” pays 18% less than a “broadcaster” and a “journalist” would pay 33% less than a “news reporter”.

The moral of the story is to get a few different quotes using variations on your job title and provided that you’re not actually fibbing then go with the cheapest.

Watched a fascinating fly on the wall documentary on Channel 4 last night. Scams Fiddles and Honest Claims was filmed in the Norwich Union insurance investigation department. Their “front man” told us that 1 in 10 claims is fraudulent or inflated and that last year they dealt with 20,000 fraudulent claims and they were expecting that figure to rise to 30,000 this year. The TV program had some huge holes in it but I’ll tell you about them as we go through the list.

First claimant was a lady who had submitted a claim for a £2,500 engagement ring left in a hotel safe in Egypt. The investigator went to see her ex-fiancee before meeting her and he handed over said ring (he’d taken it with him when they had split up). Once confronted with the ring, she had no option but to confess. She said that she needed the money and she’d been paying insurance for years so thought that they owed her something. It seemed that she worked in a pub and she said that she’d spoken to loads of people that were getting away with insurance fraud. The N.U. man told us that once insurance fraud was detected the company would do its best to get back any money already paid out, they would then cancel any other insurance that the client held and by doing this it would make it difficult or impossible for the villain to be able to get insurance from any other company.

The next case was an immigrant (he didn’t speak English and had an interpreter present) who claimed for £13,000 worth of electrical equipment such as flat screen tv, expensive camera etc. The investigator was very dubious about the claim because of the area of Manchester that the guy lived in. He didn’t believe that anybody in that area would own £13,000 worth of high quality electrical equipment. The suspect proceeded to produce the empty boxes for all of the stuff, plus receipts. The program said that 10 months later the claimant still hadn’t been paid out but it left you up in the air wondering if he was guilty or not.

In a short piece filmed in the N.U. office they showed a sophisticated machine that could show if a receipt had been tampered with, a bill for £3,000 had been altered to £8,000.

Another film clip showed a couple whose house had been flooded in Hull earlier this summer. Their total claim of £40,000 (with a different insurer) had been disallowed because a neighbour had phoned the insurance company to say that they saw the claimant taking a fridge and freezer out of a skip and putting them in his shed before claiming on them. The N.U. man was quick to point out that one single discrepancy in a claim could invalidate the entire claim and it seems that’s what had happened on this occasion. He also told of an instance where a lady phoned to arrange house and contents insurance…2 hours after her house had been flooded!.

They were also investigating another claim where a builder was claiming for a stolen van where an anonymous tip-off had told them that it had been driven away by his mate. They were having trouble making this one stick because of lack of evidence, but it was very clear from the program that the insurance companies put a great deal of weight behind tip-offs and that you could be in serious trouble if you find yourself in this position. The moral seems to be not to fall out with friends or neighbours.

The final two clips involved organised gangs defrauding the insurance companies. In the first one the investigators had uncovered a huge ring of people that were having “accidents” amongst themselves. In every case it was reported that a car had rear-ended theirs and pushed it into a tree or a lamp post. When they visited one of the claimants (Mr Bafanya) he was asked to explain what had happened. He recounted how a car had hit him and pushed his car into a lamp post. Unfortunately, on the claim form he had said that his car had been pushed into a tree. The claim was dismissed. The other scam involved a gang of people who were slamming on their brakes when approaching the entrance to an empty roundabout. The innocent (but careless) motorists behind them were shunting them up the rear and when you hit another car up the arse it’s ALWAYS your fault, so they were able to claim against the other drivers insurance and presumably pocket the proceeds.

A really interesting program, there’s a number of video clips from the program on the web page, well worth a watch.

Received a press release this morning extolling the virtues of a new travel insurance product from a company named noclaimscashback.com. At first glance it seems a neat product, you pay for your travel insurance and then when you’re back home, provided that you haven’t made a claim, you get up to £10 of your money back. They compare it to the no claims discount that we get with motor insurance, whereas I tend to compare it with life insurance, you don’t get any refunds but you’re still alive !.

Anyhow, let’s take a closer look at the small print :-

• Single trips only - no annual policies
• Single person or couples only - no family groups
• Everybody has to be between 18 and 49 years of age
• No ski insurance available
• No insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions

So, they’re cherry picking the very lowest risk travelers and are only offering single trip policies. We’ve always pointed out that the best value comes from annual policies, and that’s best value to you, the consumer, and thus lowest profit to the insurer.

Their pre-existing medical conditions clause of the policy isn’t awfully clear and I’d strongly advise anybody considering buying this particular policy to contact the company and double check if they are at all unsure. The relevant clause is

“The policy does not provide cover for any pre-existing medical condition. A medical condition is any medical condition which has been suffered or which is under review (routine or otherwise), or for which medication, advice or treatment has been received within the last 12 months (prior to the date your policy is issued). This includes long standing conditions as well as injuries.”

When I checked against a Churchill policy, Churchill restrict the medical condition to anything that caused you to be hospitalised within the last 12 months. There’s a big difference there. Also most companies will offer insurance (maybe restricted a little) to most people with pre-existing, long term medical conditions, it’s another instance of noclaimscashback  cherry picking the very safest clients.

My final thought on this policy is that it reminds me of the recent phone cashback scandal where people were promised their money back at the end of a one year term. The phone companies were expecting only a small percentage of customers to claim their money back. When something like 80% claimed their cash the company couldn’t pay and it left a very bad taste in the mouth. I’m not suggesting that there is any danger of noclaimscashback not returning money although I do worry that the terms for repayment are quite so strict in that you are offered up to £10 back provided that you claim it after one month and before two months of your return.

I’m sure that the policy will appeal to some people, myself I’m happy to get back from a holiday that went without incident or accident, travel insurance is money well spent and I hope to never have to make a claim.

A piece in the business section of The Scotsman is taking a pop at the comparison sites such as moneysupermarket.com and confused.com. The article is saying that the comparison sites are not comparing like with like (that’s possible), and that customers are being tricked into buying the cheapest product without checking if it meets their needs. I can’t see that you can accuse the price comparison sites of mis-selling because their customers don’t read the policy document before buying. Surely that’s possible with any online site, no matter what it’s selling. If the client buys a product without checking to make sure that it does what he wants, it’s hardly the web site’s fault.

The article goes on to recommend that you buy all insurance through a broker. That’s fine if you want to spend over the odds  on your insurance but many of us have got used to the cheaper insurance premiums which are only available online. I’d be the first to agree that if you have a situation that doesn’t seem to fit any of the online products then you should use a broker so that you can explain your needs and he’ll find something that is right for you. It’s a completely different situation when you are middle aged, with a clean driving license and want to insure your standard production car. In that situation you’re never going to find a broker who can offer the same prices as a direct online insurer such as Tesco or Direct Line.

The whole situation reminds me of the story of the tech support guy on the phone to somebody whose computer was completely dead. He’d been on the phone for around 20 minutes getting the customer to check this and that and then asked the client to check that the monitor was firmly plugged into the back of the PC. The client replied that he’d have to get a torch to see..because they had a power cut. The support guy calmly instructed the client to box up the computer and return it to the store, to which the client replied “ah, so you know what’s wrong then”. “Yes sir you’re too F£$%ing stupid to be allowed to use a computer !”. Sadly, the tech support guy was fired, but I’m sure that he found a more satisfying job as a result, he certainly earned notoriety in the computer industry.

My reason for recounting the above tale is that maybe all people wanting to buy online should be given a simple test to ensure that they are fully capable of understanding exactly what they’re buying. Why does everything have to be “dumbed down” until it’s understandable by my pet goldfish?.

Amid claims that British holidaymakers are taking loutish behaviour to the winter sports resorts comes news that Swiss piste police have introduced speed cameras in some popular resorts. Their aim is to slow down speeding or drunken skiers in an attempt to reduce a worrying increase in the numbers of deaths and serious injuries on the slopes.

Après ski is recognised as an essential ingredient of the winter snow scene, but insurers are keen to point out that skiing after too many drinks invalidates your ski insurance cover. Insurance policy terms and conditions state that cover ceases in any incident “caused by the direct or indirect effect of you using alcohol or solvents or you being under the influence of drugs.”

A story in the Telegraph points out that even with the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) there could still be significant expenses for mountain rescue, ambulance rides and flights home. The story is even worse in the US, in fact you’d be totally mad to ski there uninsured simply because medical fees are simply sky high.

When arranging you winter sports insurance remember that an annual policy with ski cover will be about the same price as two separate policies if planning to go abroad once during the summer. If there’s the chance of additional weekends in Europe then go for the annual policy, you’ll save money and it’s one less thing to worry about when planning a trip.

Further to my piece a couple of days ago, I’ve just been reading some information from the Manchester Police saying that uninsured drivers are six times more likely to have convictions for driving un-roadworthy vehicles and nine times more likely to have convictions for drink-driving.

And their crimes are said to put an extra £30 on every car insurance premium.

The latest technology fitted to lots of police cars ensures that vehicles not registered on the database system (it checks insurance, road tax, driving license and MOT) automatically trigger an alert to officers who, under the new powers, can seize cars. - That’s Good !

Drivers unable to produce proof of insurance have their vehicles impounded.

To reclaim their vehicles, owners must pay £105 for recovery, £12 a day storage, and a £200 fixed penalty notice or a fine imposed by a court. - That’s Bad !.

So for around £350 they can retrieve their cars and be driving around uninsured again, because it’s a certain fact that they won’t be wanting to pay the insurance premium that’s demanded following their conviction for “no insurance”, drunk driving etc.

If an owner fails to reclaim the vehicle within 14 days, it is crushed, scrapped or sold. - Ha…there’s the answer then. Lock ‘em all up for 15 days when you seize the car. When they get out and pay their fine present them with the block of crushed metal - Oh I like it!.