At around 9.30 pm last Friday night my family started to pack our little car with our possessions that are important to us. We were on high alert. From our bedroom window we could see the glow of the bush fire over the hill, advancing on an evacuated suburb only a few minutes’ walk from us. The scene in the photo is what we could see.
The fire was uncontrolled and moving quickly. It was to be a sleepless night but I knew that emergency services from a 50 to 100 km radius were doing their best to protect us and our assets.
We loaded up our wedding photos, family photos, laptops, backup disks (all stored on the cloud as well), jewellery and other important items and documentation. We consoled ourselves with the fact our home and other belongings are insured. We told our kids, things can be replaced but to pack what is important to you.
The reality is, we are part of the lucky small percentage of people in the world who can actually afford insurance to replace our things.
I have travelled extensively, seen opulence and seen extreme poverty. Friday night for me, however, was a major reality check. It’s one thing to understand the benefit of insurance, it’s another thing to pick and choose the belongings that insurance can’t replace.
One of our core goals as a company has been to do our part in making insurance affordable for everyone. We hear in the media that some forms of cover or insurance should be a basic right. The debate continues in the US, for example, about access to medical insurance. But what about home or contents insurance?
Insurance allows us to recover from an event that has damaged or destroyed our assets or our financial position. Having insurance means that we might be emotionally affected by the loss of treasured keepsakes, but within a short period we will be in a new home with new possessions. Those in the world who can’t afford insurance will lose their shelter, their contents, their clothes. In many cases they will next lose their ability to work, earn an income and feed their family.
Large parts of the world’s population cannot access or afford any form of insurance.
Lack of access results from the inability to apply and be approved for insurance. Lack of affordability comes from the cost structure faced by the insurer or broker in marketing their products, managing customer applications and administering all aspects of the policy including any changes to the individual cover, renewals, cancellations, all the complex financial aspects, and claims.
Administration costs form a major component of the price of insurance. InsuredHQ aims to reduce those costs by providing a full featured insurance platform at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems. The InsuredHQ model allows a company to implement the InsuredHQ system cost effectively, and to benefit from all software updates and innovations as they are released.
This system means that InsuredHQ will empower insurance companies to offer insurance policies that suit their target market, which are cost effective for the client but still profitable for the insurer. Greater access to insurance will change lives.
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