Insurance - here’s your chance

[Lindun]

Everyone knows insurance is rubbish and how to do it better. Well, here’s your chance. Apparently Bennetts will be up for sale soon for less than the £26m it was sold for 5 years ago. Saga are likely to offload this as part of their restructuring programme after suffering some significant losses.

https://www.insuranceage.co.uk/broker/4204011/saga...

Any takers?

[Prof Prolapse]

I'm not sure that making a business profitable and addressing perceptions of deep rooted problems in an industry are the same thing.

If change is required (and personally I do think there's at least been a failure to engage the consumer appropriately), it's basis is clearly industry wide and legislative, me hypothetically buying a failed company is unlikely to change that.

I mean it's not really a "put your money where your mouth is", sort of argument is it? Even for those who have £26 million kicking around to try and prove a point to people on the internet...

[Lindun]

It’s not failing, the parent company is.

Disrupting an industry from within is far easier than outwith.

[Prof Prolapse]

Lindun said:

It’s not failing, the parent company is.

Disrupting an industry from within is far easier than outwith.

Apologies on the first point, I misread.

I guess it depends on what the gripes are, most people whinge about how much money you guys make, but anyone who actually takes the time to try base their argument on more than ignorance will quickly realise that's categorically not true.

Then there's the way it's calculated, but that actually is dictated by legislation and circumstances... So no hope there...

Then there's rising premiums, but this is driven by claims, many as I understand it many of these are because of shameless fake injuries, corrupt garages, and needlessly expensive third party car hire... So no help there either...

Business practices? Maybe. But at the end of the day it's driven by the consumer. No one gives a st about customer service they care about price. I mean you just need to venture into a supermarket to realise no one gives a toss anymore, it's all about the lowest price, and if people literally shovel st into their bodies to save a few quid so you've no hope on them investing more in their insurance on the off chance they need it.

Customer service? Yes, but you admittedly have that anyway. I just paid more to stay with an insurer who actually provided me with good service. I don't know if I've ever heard of anyone else doing this.

Personally, I do personally struggle to see how with a captive audience of millions with a product they need to have by law, there's money to be made, but you need industry wide change.

My suggestion before, if you recall, was the aggregation of claims and accident data to publicly owned third party so you have a much larger dataset and a more accurate measure of risk. The "pool" system, self-evidently does not reflect the reality of probability in all instances, which shows it is flawed.

But I understand you'd need industry wide buy in, and presumably significantly legislative changes. Unlikely to come about when it would signal the death of huge chunks of your industry. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas after all. Me buying this company wouldn't help me realise my suggestion.

[wa16]

Bennetts is a broker not an insurer

so there is no opportunity to influence anything and any prospective buyer would need some assurance that the insurers would stay loyal to Bennetts and still offer them an account/business

the loss of Bennetts makes no difference to the pool of insurers available to insure with

the best option, if the name has good will, would be to be purchased by an existing motorcycle insurer

[Lindun]

wa16 said:

Bennetts is a broker not an insurer

so there is no opportunity to influence anything and any prospective buyer would need some assurance that the insurers would stay loyal to Bennetts and still offer them an account/business

the loss of Bennetts makes no difference to the pool of insurers available to insure with

the best option, if the name has good will, would be to be purchased by an existing motorcycle insurer

You underestimate the value of delegated underwriting and claims handling. The motorbike market is very much controlled by brokers and hasn’t followed the direct underwriting approach of the private car market.