Do you think we’ll be able to make the case to get in? Are we ourselves convinced that what we have done in our lives has been broadly “good”?
Might we actually end up traveling in the opposite direction – down to the fire and smoke filled-rooms, and condemned to read continuous FSA consultation papers and respond to FOS complaints?
Certainly, feeling good about what you do in your working life is likely to put off the day this case will have to be made. People happy in their work live longer.
But I think there is a pretty good case to be made whenever the time comes.
Advising people on how to organise one of the most fundamental aspects of their lives – their homes – and how to protect themselves and their families against the problems of life’s ups and downs has got to fall into the definition of “good”.
It is perhaps only when you see or experience for yourself the extremes – the consequences of having good insurance or not having insurance at all – that this really strikes home.
In my first month as a management trainee in Abbey National Building Society in North London, I was asked to speak to a customer – a Cypriot lady, with four children and a husband who had just died.
No insurance. About to lose the family home. One life lost and five devastated.
In those days, the salesmen from Royal Insurance (as it then was) used to carry around a printed card with a quotation from Churchill. (And I don’t recommend looking for this by typing “insurance” and “Churchill” into Google by the way.)
The quotation read:
“If I had my way, I would write the word ‘Insure’ upon the door of every cottage, and upon the blotting book of every man, because I am convinced, for sacrifices so small, families and estates can be protected against catastrophes which would otherwise smash them up for ever.
“It is the duty to arrest the ghastly waste, not merely of human happiness, but national health and strength, which follows when, through the death of the breadwinner, the frail boat in which the family are embarked, founders and they are left to struggle in the dark waters of a friendless world.”
Powerful stuff.
It had a real impact; I know, I bought two policies from our local rep as a consequence.
And it is not just life insurance, of course. Legal & General’s recent experience of the extremes following the floods in Cumbria is very real.
For where our team were making rapid arrangements for repairs and renovation, organising alternative accommodation and compensation for our policy holders, they saw many who had no insurance all or who had gone for the cheapest premiums only to find that on a really rainy day, the cover was inadequate.
Not everything that the mortgage intermediary industry has done over the last few decades has been perfect or positive, but in the broad sense, when we are at our best, what we do is “good”.
We help people organise their finances sensibly, we help them move home and, if we are doing the good full job, we try to make sure they have the insurances to mean they and their families can stay in that home no matter what life throws at them.
Being a “force for good” in the financial services market and in your public life should make you feel good about yourself.
It should add a few counters to the plus side when the balance sheet is drawn up by St Peter or whoever.
As for private lives? Well, they can be another matter entirely.
Stephen Smith is director of housing at Legal & General
