General insurance and the public interest

Document description

The actuarial profession has a duty to serve the public interest, a duty that it intends to fulfil. What it does in pursuit of that duty could affect all actuaries, including those working in general insurance. This report starts by considering and challenging how the profession attempts to fulfil its public interest role. It looks in particular at the establishment of position statements. The report calls for greater acknowledgement in the formation of the profession’s stance on public interest matters of the views of rank and file members. The rest of the report looks at various - but far from all - public interest issues in general insurance. It considers these from a variety of viewpoints, highlights some that warrant further research and makes various suggestions regarding others. Some of these suggestions will be eminently acceptable to most readers and others will cause near apoplexy. That is fine, most are suggestions not recommendations, and they are intended primarily to stimulate active thinking. Providing that those who have extreme reactions to this paper are consequently prepared to air their views in open and coherent debate then the report will have served a useful purpose. In order to whet readers’ appetites the following sets out what we have done. We have crawled all over compulsory insurance, commission disclosure, the mis-selling/misbuying of insurance products, and access to insurance. We have looked at ways of making private motor cover more affordable for youngsters, at the desirability or otherwise of there being restrictions imposed on premium rating, and at how the rules regarding claims are set. We have investigated whether the existence of captives and of the reinsurance market is in the public interest. Finally, we have considered whether actuaries need to be more intuitive in their communications with the public.