According to the Globe and Mail, insurance brokers receive lavish vacations and other perks from insurance companies. My own brief encounter with insurance brokers didn’t reveal any conflicts of interest, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth. Continuing yesterday’s story of my home insurance company dropping me , my next step was to try to find another insurance company to take me on. I decided to try an insurance broker and called a few. None answered the phone. I left messages and when I didn’t get a call back by the next day, I called a few others. In all I called 15 insurance brokers. Only one had a human answer the phone to take a message. After I left a second message with one broker, I got a call back from a guy who took some information, promised to call back again, but never did. The entire experience was baffling. Something big must have been happening in the industry at that time.

People who run small businesses out of their homes often mistakenly think that their home insurance policies cover their business activities. As explained by Miranda at Financial Highway this is usually not the case. My own experience with home insurance was much worse than the picture Miranda paints. I used to run a one-man consulting business. The only things I needed for the business were a computer, some space in my files for papers, and some desk space. I never even had any clients in my home. Even so, I thought it would be best to contact my insurance company to make sure I was properly covered. I also inquired about professional liability insurance for my business dealings. The insurance company took all the information, went away for a long time, and finally came back to say that they wouldn’t offer me professional liability insurance and further they were dropping me for home insurance! They didn’t care that I had nothing in my home that would matter to my business...

A while ago during a temporary gap in my house insurance, some of my friends joked about coming over to my place and “having an accident” to make some big money. Of course they weren’t serious, and we all had a good laugh. Later on I thought about what had made the joke funny. If you think about it, a fraudster would have better luck getting a big settlement from an insurance company than from me. So, for a short while my house was probably the worst place to target for faking an accident. But my friends and I all got the joke instantly, even though it doesn’t seem to make much sense after some thought. What is going on? To answer this you need to look at how house insurance is marketed and sold. The best example is one insurance company that shows the image of a giant protective blanket enveloping your house. As long as you don’t think about it too much, you have the feeling that house insurance actually helps prevent accidents. The marketing promotes this subconscious idea. Of co...