Need insurance? Use a broker!
There’s a lot to be said for a traditional insurance broker.
Intense Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulation has made insurance an extremely complicated matter. Even if you just want simple car or home insurance, you’ll be sent a great wad of documents to read through and sign.
Insurance companies are legally bound to send us all this gumph, which is actually designed to help us make sure we’ve got the cover we want. And yes, all the information you need to make a decision is there. Sadly, it is usually written using jargon or legalese, in small print, and there’s mountains of it.
If you misunderstand what you’re covered for, or get something else wrong, or fail to disclose everything they want to know, an insurance company can use your error as an excuse to wriggle out of claims. So it is vitally important that you do everything exactly right.
Price comparison websites are all very well. You’ll probably find a really good deal. But if you go to an insurance broker, on your high street, you’ll be able to talk to a real, live person about what you need.
They get paid a small commission for helping you out but that covers them helping you decide what you need to disclose, filling in all the paperwork and checking your insurance documents once they come through. Which can make the difference between being properly covered and absolute disaster!
Many insurance brokers have access to a large number of insurance providers so you might well find that going to a broker saves you some cash as well as helping you to avoid problems with claims.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Interesting article! It is also shocking to compare the price of bank insurance - which you have no control over - to cheaper fully underwritten individual policies.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I agree with every single word of this article. I was trying to get a home insurance by myself without any broker, but it was harder than I could imagine. Thanks to FSA for all this mess. I had to fill those documents three times in a row, because every time they were finding that I done something wrong. So listen to the author of this article and hire a good broker.