It doesn't take long for a once novel idea to perpetrate into something which far belies its original purpose. History is chequered with many such ideas that humans have proudly claimed to have converted into grand money minting businesses.
The human mind, with its amazing tenacity can turn a cow shed into a profit making company with much ease. When insurance was first introduced around 2000 BC its purpose was to relieve a perosn from liabilities due an unexpected loss of goods or other valuables. Merchants would pay extra amounts aganist loans to safe gaurd any losses of goods at sea or otherwise. Over the years to this day not much has changed, except that the insurers have jumped on the modern bandwagon to covertly, conviniently and cleverly market anything that has a risk against it as an insurance product.
Today, people live in a greater fear of something wrong happening than those of earlier generations. We want to get everything insured in a bid to have atleast something in hand when we are left with a loss. The worrying factor is that this sense of fear is slowly outgrowing the actual sense of loss whenever it occurs. The biggest culprit to put it blatantly are the beautiful ad campaigns launched by the new age insurance companies. Quite a few of them walk you through a pleasant situation of an average person's day to day life and abruptly stop at something going horribly wrong, only to point that this hasn't actually happened but may happen to you at any time starting now! What this advertisement does is nothing short of a subtle blackmail. Not that the probability of something going wrong has increased but that now you have some one like a CICIC Prudes xyz insurance company caring for you and your family more than god actually ever would! In the times of hardships or great personal loss your insurance company would stand by you like a god father and whisk away your worries by presenting you that 6 figure cheque as consolation. I often wonder what goes on in the board rooms of their marketing divisions. Does each person come up with a strategy which has the potential to wreck someones nerves and spend their hard earnings hypnotically on their insurance product? Once the strategies are lined up do they select the one which has the best scare qoutient? or the one with he most caring fatherly hypnotic tone to it? Using your kids and their future, your grandmother's smile & then her bathroom fall, your wife... without her husband in the future..are just some of the ploys these ads have refered to these days. Clearly the tone is - 'Hey we are just showing you the truth, see we care for your loved ones and your money'. The ads are getting increasingly aggressive by the day and it may not be too far into the future when newborns would need to have a checklist of insurances aganist them before they actually leave the hospital wards. People being slapped and kidnapped to buy insurance in future cannot be ruled out either.
Saving for a bad winter is onething but giving away your hard earned money regularly to a company who needs to feed its ever increasing staff of cunning advertisers and sales people to trick everyone is another. Retirement plans are understandable when you save a small amount regularly to have something in the kitty once you are old, but saving a majority of your money now so that you grow old or die rich while living a pitiable life is also quite another. If you talk of the NOW, who gets rich NOW are the insurance sellers and their respective agents by living off and saving from your hard earned money. They would eventually live rich and die richer, than most of us.
This is not about having the perfect investment plan but about why to stop a moment to think before any of these insurance marsh mellows hit you hard on the TV, web or anywhere and point the 'accident waiting to happen' to us again and again. The only thing in the favour of these ads and sellers is, they cannot be singled out in a bad bad world of big boss morals and media with only the truth on their tongues.
The human mind, with its amazing tenacity can turn a cow shed into a profit making company with much ease. When insurance was first introduced around 2000 BC its purpose was to relieve a perosn from liabilities due an unexpected loss of goods or other valuables. Merchants would pay extra amounts aganist loans to safe gaurd any losses of goods at sea or otherwise. Over the years to this day not much has changed, except that the insurers have jumped on the modern bandwagon to covertly, conviniently and cleverly market anything that has a risk against it as an insurance product.
Today, people live in a greater fear of something wrong happening than those of earlier generations. We want to get everything insured in a bid to have atleast something in hand when we are left with a loss. The worrying factor is that this sense of fear is slowly outgrowing the actual sense of loss whenever it occurs. The biggest culprit to put it blatantly are the beautiful ad campaigns launched by the new age insurance companies. Quite a few of them walk you through a pleasant situation of an average person's day to day life and abruptly stop at something going horribly wrong, only to point that this hasn't actually happened but may happen to you at any time starting now! What this advertisement does is nothing short of a subtle blackmail. Not that the probability of something going wrong has increased but that now you have some one like a CICIC Prudes xyz insurance company caring for you and your family more than god actually ever would! In the times of hardships or great personal loss your insurance company would stand by you like a god father and whisk away your worries by presenting you that 6 figure cheque as consolation. I often wonder what goes on in the board rooms of their marketing divisions. Does each person come up with a strategy which has the potential to wreck someones nerves and spend their hard earnings hypnotically on their insurance product? Once the strategies are lined up do they select the one which has the best scare qoutient? or the one with he most caring fatherly hypnotic tone to it? Using your kids and their future, your grandmother's smile & then her bathroom fall, your wife... without her husband in the future..are just some of the ploys these ads have refered to these days. Clearly the tone is - 'Hey we are just showing you the truth, see we care for your loved ones and your money'. The ads are getting increasingly aggressive by the day and it may not be too far into the future when newborns would need to have a checklist of insurances aganist them before they actually leave the hospital wards. People being slapped and kidnapped to buy insurance in future cannot be ruled out either.
Saving for a bad winter is onething but giving away your hard earned money regularly to a company who needs to feed its ever increasing staff of cunning advertisers and sales people to trick everyone is another. Retirement plans are understandable when you save a small amount regularly to have something in the kitty once you are old, but saving a majority of your money now so that you grow old or die rich while living a pitiable life is also quite another. If you talk of the NOW, who gets rich NOW are the insurance sellers and their respective agents by living off and saving from your hard earned money. They would eventually live rich and die richer, than most of us.
This is not about having the perfect investment plan but about why to stop a moment to think before any of these insurance marsh mellows hit you hard on the TV, web or anywhere and point the 'accident waiting to happen' to us again and again. The only thing in the favour of these ads and sellers is, they cannot be singled out in a bad bad world of big boss morals and media with only the truth on their tongues.
