Insurance Companies are Going Cheap! - Recession Latest!
The recession has hit the insurance industry particularly hard and no sector has to date escaped. Aggregation has been a prominent feature of the market for a long time. Before the recession
Insurance Brokers were the main target with the number of independent providers reduced by more than half as aggressive agglomerators swooped on books of business up and down the country.
The recesssion has brought with it major troubles for large bank owned brands such as Churchill and Direct Line and it looks like RBS will finally be forced to sell it's crown jewels
Recent activity has also seen many large re-insurance companies going for a song!
However you really know the recession has hit home when you can pick up forward thinking Insurance Websites for peanuts....
Here is an Advert from this weeks
insurance news
Now that is Cheap!
Labels: acquisitions, Insurance Business for sale, Insurance companies, insurance domain names, Insurance Mergers and Acquisitions, insurance news, Insurance Websites, Internet Marketing, recession
UK Consumer Law Tested for Loan Protection
Insurance Blogger loves a peoples champion and as this test case has shown UK consumers may now have far more rights and
loan protection under UK Consumer Credit Law than was previously realised....
And the UK Courts will probably be filling up with cases as fast as those dealing with the mis-selling of loan and
mortgage protection insurance products as other legal firms jump onto the bandwagon.
Once again it will be Insurance that underwrites these ridiculous anti-social court cases......
Last week, a debtor secured a five-year block on his home repossession in a claims management case against his lender Blemain Finance, after consumer credit law was used to challenge his secured loan agreement.
The firm acting for Cardiff-based Peter Bentley, claims management company, Cartel Client Review, used the meaning of unfair relationships under Section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act (CCA) 1974 to claim that his loan contract with Blemain Finance was an unfair one.
Blemain also agreed to charge no further interest on the GBP 40,000 loan and cut his repayments from roughly GBP 550 to GBP 150 a month. At the High Court in Cardiff Judge Milwyn Jarman also prevented the lender from levying any charges or legal costs.
The judge barred Blemain for enforcing repayment via repossession for five years, but even after this period, it can only bring repossession proceedings if there are at least 12 months’ arrears on the new level of payments.
Bentley’s lawyers, Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors (CCLS), successfully argued that Blemain had loaned the money to Bentley irresponsibly and that the agreement took advantage of his desperate situation.
CCLS argued that shortcomings in the decision making procedure on granting the loan, such as in the under writing, affordability checks and valuation processes, led to the credit agreement being unfair.
Andrew Settle, solicitor for CCLS, said: "The relationship between the parties was an unfair one within the meaning of Section 140A of the CCA 1974. CCLS is utilising a significant number of legal arguments, like those used on behalf of Mr Bentley, in thousands of cases on behalf of our clients."
CCLS successfully demanded to have the loan account re written, which is believed to be the first time a loan account has been rewritten under settlement, as a result of the unfair relationships test.
Carl Wright, chief executive of Cartel Client Review, claimed that Blemain made the offer to Bentley in a bid to prevent a judge in a High Court setting a legal precedent against its lending practices.
He added: "The consumer credit rule book is being re-written as a result of High Court settlements like Blemain Finance Limited v Bentley. With consumer victories won recently in the Courts and landmark cases settled, and further cases to be determined by the High Courts, the consumer financial landscape will change irrevocably as we move in to 2010.”
Mr Bentley’s financial problems started when his mother died in 2007. He began part-time work to look after his father, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and then took out a GBP 40,000 secured loan in February 2007 to alleviate his financial predicament.
Bentley later fell behind with his repayments and by the time the case was heard in court, the debt had risen to GBP 47,000.
Labels: Consumer Credit Law, credit cards, credit crunch, Debt, loan protection, loan protection insurance, loans, recession, Secured Loan Insurance, UK Courts
UK Commercial Insurance Sector Set To Recover
With the UK in the deepest recession since records began in the 1950's, it is hardly surprising that the
Commercial Insurance Sector has seen it's customer base shrinking faster than the Royal Mail says it is losing hand written letters, and one would have thought that the beleaguered
business insurance sector would have little to look forward too in the new year....
However, things are not always what they seem and as Kris Oldland reports, there appears to be green shoots of recovery for the spring........
SME Commercial Insurance Sector sees promise in 2010
After a year which has been tricky for some and catastrophic for others we could be forgiven for looking towards 2010 with some trepidation and in some of the more morose corners of industry dare we say it, a heavy dose of doom and gloom? Well those hardy soles in the ever exciting SME market are having none of it – despite the sector being hit harder by the recession than most.
At least that is what the results of a recent report from British communication giant BT would seem to suggest.
The 2009 BT Pulse report has revealed that an overwhelming three quarters of SME’s predict the economy will see an upturn in 2010. Further to this over 60% of the respondents were confident about their businesses prospects for the coming year and an impressively confident 35% even predicted their situation will have improved as soon as January 2010.
The report surveyed 7,200 Directors of small and medium sized enterprises and a strategy director at BT commented that the findings “show that the economy is at a tipping point. Despite the obvious knock to confidence, positivity about when the upturn will come is encouraging.”
With 45% of the respondents going as far as saying that they have streamlined their business so that they are now operating even better as a result of the downturn, it seems that many of these SME operators are primed to thrive as soon as the market catches them up.
These bold predictions have also been echoed by the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), who have also recently released a similar statement that “confidence among business professionals has turned positive for the first time in two years.”
However not all quarters of the UK industry are predicting quite such a swift return to the good times as the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has issued a slightly more ominous statement that although the recovery may have started, the economy still faces considerable risk.
According to the organisation, GDP will drop by 4.3 per cent this year, followed by growth of 1.1 per cent in 2010 – an improvement on the BCC’s June prediction of 0.6 per cent.
David Kern, chief economist at the BCC, says: ‘While we expect a gradual improvement over the next two years, the pace of UK expansion is likely to be weak by pre-recession standards. It is critical that wealth-creating businesses have adequate capacity to respond to an upturn in demand when the recovery strengthens.’
However despite the general confidence, many SME’s are still walking a dangerous tightrope leaving themselves unnecessarily open to adverse risk as they cut their policies and leave themselves underinsured.
Of course should these buoyant entrepreneurial companies live up to the high expectations they are piling upon themselves then it follows that their insurance needs will grow too and with the aid of a good broker they may just be able to manage the balancing act of ensuring that their cover is adequate and competitively priced.
With the SME sector looking once again to rise like a phoenix from the ashes the role of the high street commercial insurance brokers could once again become a crucial link between the sector and the general insurance industry.
About the Author:Kris Oldland is an Insurance Journalist with particular interest in Commercial Insurance and UK business Insurance
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - SME Commercial Insurance Sector sees promise in 2010
Labels: business insurance, commercial insurance, commercial risks, credit crunch, Economy, recession
Recession still to bottom out as UK Insurance Industry Suffers
The pundits in the housing markets often seem to be singing from a different songsheet when it comes to what's really happening in the UK economy. One minute we hear that repossessions have dropped in comparison to the first quarter of 2009, and that house prices are rising, but this is surely industry sales talk.
Fact of the matter is house prices haven't reached anything like the levels needed to stimulate a National recovery and movement in the market. Mortgages are very difficult to come by and often require up to a thirty percent deposit. Those lucky ones on tracker mortgages are praying every month that the Bank of England doesn't put up interest rates, otherwise many of them would bejoining the ranks of the reposessed!
Credit in general is non-existant, particularly in the Car Finance sector, and the credit card companies with their extortionate rates are only interested in recuoperating lending and tightening the national screw further!
Unemployment is rising and you only have to drive a short distance to see hundreds of towns that relied upon local industries that have gone to the wall, with the ranks of unemployed growing on a daily basis!
We as a Nation are in the proverbial big time, the good news is so is everybody else!
Insurance in the UK is suffering big time in many ways too. Households are cutting back on items seen as luxuries and Insurance is often perceived this way. In particular
home insurance and personal finance insurances such as income protection have seen their markets decimated.
As no mortgages are being given away and the recent furore over miselling,
mortgage protection insurance has virtually disappeared as a product to be replaced by a more encompassing lifestyle protection insurance policy.
Car insurance is in trouble too, despite the fact that it is compulsory. Many underwriters have been asking for rate rises for nearly two years but the prices have been artificially kept down by the levels of competition brought in by the Internet insurance comparison sites or aggregators as they are known. Many major players have made substantial losses in the Motor market over the last few years and many have had to cut deeply into their reserves. This cannot go on ad infinitum, and prices must harden. This will inevitably lead to many suppliers leaving the market.
As for the car scrappage scheme - did that generate demand? Yeah for a couple of thousand Hyundais built in India and imported into the UK - Sheer and utter madness!
Commercial Insurance is the one area which has obviously taken a massive reduction in premium volumes as businesses go to the wall and very few new startups enter the market.
One thing we can be sure of it's going to be a long cold winter, a change of UK Government won't make the slightest bit of difference and by the noises coming out on ABC and CBS News recently is going to kick of Stateside long before it does here!
Labels: Barack Obama, car insurance, credit crunch, Home Insurance, housing market, insurance news, misselling, recession, small business insurance, UK government, unemployment
Commercial Insurance Explained - Small Business Insurance Advice
Small business insurance or commercial insurance for enterprises has suffered in parallel with the decline in commercial and entreprenuerial activity in the UK and worldwide during the last six months.
Consequently those offering cover have to be more inventive, cutthroat in pricing or superior in their risk assessment in order to maintain decent profit levels.
This background to
UK Commercial Insurance has been altered largely by the large number of new Internet suppliers, finally offering commercial insurance for small business propositions online.
This has not only impacted upon consumers as a wider choice of business insurance products, but the downturn in the economy has meant that what should be hard premium rates are in fact fairly soft.
Add to this the number of illegal claims that businesses always make during a recession and you are potentially sitting on a very explosive if some what interesting market.
Despite the recession there are many small business start-ups hasppening at the moment so we reprint on of Insurance bloggers articles here that explains to small and large businesses the wide and varied range of commercial risks that need to be assessed on an individual company level and purchased appropriately.
Understanding Commercial Insurance Risks and Business Insurance Covers
By Dave Healey
If you own or manage a business, either large or small, you will require some type of insurance to protect your company against the various risks and potential multitude of claims, that your business will face.
Commercial insurance or Business insurance as it is commonly known, is a complicated area of underwriting and because all businesses are different, and face different risks depending upon the nature of the company, various packages and combined policy covers have been introduced by insurance companies and commercial broker schemes, to make the process easier.
An example of a small business insurance package which is commonly sold online is the Tradesman's insurance package, which includes all elements of cover required by a small business or self employed trader such as basic liability covers and theft of tools.
Other small business insurance packages that are trade specific and can often be obtained online are available for shopkeepers, offices, surgeries, hotels and guest houses, restaurants, public houses and builders.
Large companies will be offered what is known as a commercial combined policy which has many different elements of cover which can be combined to make a bespoke policy for the enterprise. Most large companies will require some degree of risk assessment before the policy is underwritten, which may often include a visit to the business premises or site, and for this reason these types of larger business usually employ the services of specialist commercial insurance brokers.
Business Insurance Risks
The largest risk that a business faces is from liability to others, and the potential costs and damages a company could face if a claim was made against it.
All companies are required by law to have in place liability cover, called Employers liability insurance or EL, to protect their staff against all potential risks and accidents while in the workplace.
Business liability insurance is usually sold as a package and will always include Public Liability, often just known as PL, which protects the company against claims from the public whilst on the business premises.
A further type of liability insurance called Product liability is also available to companies under a commercial liability policy which protects the company against claims made for design or manufacturing faults in the product.
Company directors can also protect themselves against liabilities with Directors and Officers insurance (D&O) cover.
Property Damage
Most business large and small will have premises that need protection against buildings perils such as fire and flood and commercial property insurance is available to cover all buildings insurance risks. Similarly commercial contents insurance for business premises is available which covers office and business equipment including files and data processing against the common perils. For companies that carry stock, this type of business contents insurance can be extended to cover risk such as deterioration and damage.
For the small businessman who works from home these covers are often available with strict limits of indemnity, as a bolt on to a standard home buildings and contents policy. This type of cover is often effective for self employed people with just a computer and a home office.
Business Contingency Cover
One of the largest problems faced by a business is that of how to continue in business should the worst occur, for example a fire that destroys the premises. In order to deal with this Insurance companies have devised a cover called 'Business Interruption Insurance'. Based on your previous years annual turnover, this protection insurance covers your company against all losses caused by interruption to trading due to any of the perils mentioned on the policy and will pay out on a indemnified basis for the period of cover agreed in the policy. Most policies will also offer some type of alternative trading accommodation to enable you business to continue whilst the premises are being repaired.
Additional Commercial Insurance Risks
Because commercial insurance is designed to cover all classes of business, there are many various trade or business specific covers available which can be added to a combined policy. Examples of these covers include loss of licence to trade, glass cover, goods in transit cover, book debts, commercial vehicle insurance, hauliers cover, warehouse cover, engineering insurance and plant inspection services, and theft by employees.
Outside of most commercial combined policies are additional risks, more often sold under separate policy covers, that should be considered to protect your business against all eventualities.
Examples of these are, Commercial Legal Expenses insurance cover which protects the company against claims made by employees for unfair dismissal and allows you to bring cases against suppliers.
Various protection policies are also available for businesses including Keyman insurance which provides cover against the loss of key people within your organisation. Business mortgage protection provides a monthly payment for business premises should you suffer and accident or sickness. Group ASU policies are also available to protect your staff and employees.
Purchasing Business Cover
Purchasing commercial risks insurance can be a daunting experience for the uninitiated small business owner and unless the risks are straightforward and can be underwritten online, it is advisable for all companies to approach the services of a local or regional commercial insurance broker. Insurance Brokers will not only be able to assess the complete range of risks that your business is exposed to, and provide the correct levels of cover, they will more often than not have a unique local knowledge of the risks involved and will be able to negotiate premiums that reflect the nature of the risks. Furthermore, in the event of a claim, and as most businesses will be faced with claims at some point in their trading life-cycle, the broker will handle all the settlement negotiations with the insuring company and allow you to continue what you do best - running your business.
Commercial insurance and tradesman risks covers for small business insurance are widely available online today. For larger commercial enterprises it is strongly advisable to visit commercial insurance brokers for a detailed assessment of the risks your particular business is exposed to.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Healey
http://EzineArticles.com/?Understanding-Commercial-Insurance-Risks-and-Business-Insurance-Covers&id=2601731
Labels: business insurance, commercial insurance, commercial property insurance, commercial risks, employers liability, liability insurance, public liability, recession, risk assessment
A Quarter of Home Insurance Policies Cancelled As Recession Grips
One in four people have cancelled or not renewed their annual home insurance in order to save money during the recession, according to a recent survey carried out for the association of British insuraers (ABI)
The research carried out by a national survey of over 2,000 adults conducted by YouGov, on behalf of the ABI, also shows that other insurances that are seen as 'luxuries' such as life insurance are also being ditched, as families try to balance outgoings with income, in what is already in most homes a seemingly impossible task.
The survey found the following worrying trends for the UK Insurance market:
Nearly a quarter of people 22% say that to save money in the last year they have cancelled or not renewed their
home contents insurance.
More worringly, 17% say that they have cancelled or not renewed their buildings cover, some probably against the terms of the mortgage that usually insists that buildings cover is in place to protect value of the charge on the property.
In Scotland, the figures rise to 28% for contents and 21% for buildings.
13% have cancelled their life insurance.
One in five (21%) say that they are seriously considering reducing or stopping saving. (Well with Interest rates so low - who can blame them!)
This lack of cover is leaving many families even more exposed to their biggest fear in the recession: nearly half (49%) of those surveyed said that they currently worry about their in ability to cope with a sudden event, such as a burglary, accident or loss of employment.
Interstingly, other research found that :
Over half (53%) of women worry about how they would cope with an unexpected event (compared to 43% of men).
And 44% of women are worried about the adequacy of their pension (38% men), reflecting lower pensions among women.
Asked what cutbacks people have or would be making: over two thirds (68%) said that family treats, such as eating out, were top of their list, followed by holidays (56%). Six out of ten women are prepared to reduce spending on clothes and shoes.
Insurance Blogger urges those thinking about cutting back on home insurance cover to consider what would happen if their house was burgled or flooded?
With rising crime and rising floods a couple of hundred pounds on a home insurance policy might seem small beer if the worst occurs.
Shop around for home insurance on the Internet or visit a
specialist home insurance provider for an array of good deals at the current time.
Similarly if it's not too late think about purchasing some
lifestyle protection insurance if you are worried about your future
Labels: ABI, buildings insurance, contents insurance, credit crunch, Home Insurance, recession, unemployment insurance
