Insurance Companies: Is it about Service
Insurance, by its very nature is vexing. It is the only business that thrives on countercurrent, literally, compared to other businesses. It is a product you can only buy if you provide sufficient proof that you do not need it, or even if you do, you will not need it in a hurry – It is the only thing you cannot buy after its need becomes imminent. Those in the USA, can I here pre-existing conditions? That can be replicated the world over. I will explain that in a minute.
When you buy services or products, with the exception of insurance of course, the money your service provider makes is proportionate to the services you consume. Insurance companies want to give you a product that has been tried and retested, and even simulated, nay prototyped, using the game of chance and proven that probably one in a million will need the service.
In fact insurance is gambling – a wager; where the insurer bets that you will not fall sick, in case of health insurance, or that your cherished property will not be stolen, if you take a theft cover. You, on the other hand bets that the chance of occurrence is almost certain. It is in this ensuing struggle of the conscience that you choose to give the insurer your part of the wager (premiums) even before the peril occurs, in a sense holding your ground against the insurer that the undesired event will occur anyway. Or is it?
The insurance company then says, alright I will hold on to this money and if that peril befalls you I will offset the damage; and with that, you have already fallen for it.
Insurance is a business fuelled by worry and scare – the human skepticism that something will always go wrong. This feeds into almost everybody’s thought pattern and with it a guarantee for insurers to sell empty promises, services they pray they will never have to offer. The question is: Why do people take insurance? Are they too scared? Is it fashionable? Or is it plain necessity? Do not get me wrong, I am also a consumer of these insurance products, but I have always questioned the legitimacy of purpose and the sincerity of their cause. The answer to my preceding questions is this: It is because humans are social animals and love conformity.
We can all learn a lesson from the enraging debate on USA’s President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms. The conservative (Republican) opposition party, widely claimed to be advocates of the insurance companies, is deeply opposed to a public option. In my view, they are bitter that this kind of organization, being not-for-profit, will tip the scales with its enthusiasm for service and lower premiums on the back of lower overheads. It tells volumes. Is it time for nonprofit driven insurance services for the world citizens? Or should we just wait of fate to sort it all out?
