Insurers and advertisements are the canary in the coalmine

28 Jul, 2023

I find it so interesting that certain indirect actors on the market can give you additional information about socioeconomic and climate trends.

I have read some books and articles that talk about insurers and how as a business, their decisions can reflect trends in their data. Because an insurer's main source of income is data. They need to know the probability of something happening before they can make a profit from it. The last thing they want to do is insure something that will cost them their percentage.

As soon as my insurer is raising prices for me, without a direct cause, I know I should look into the risks for that specific case for my gender and age group. For example, the insurance cost is rising for supplying and using an electric scooter. You would expect it would raise for damage and nuisance to the public space, but no. A particular rare (and hard to treat) fracture has appeared together with the increased use of the scooter. Something to do with high speeds, hard brakes and flying over the handlebars. This might make you think twice when taking a tour on such a scooter in your city.

Another example is the (travel)insurance being non-existent, limited or just ridiculously high for travelling to certain regions. It is common sense, you would think, to check why these are so high for that region. You might find out that this country struggles with pick-pocketing and thieving or generally bad infrastructure that might interfere with your vacation plans.

I remember that they talk in the book Super Freakeconomics¹ about the Bermuda Triangle and if you want to know if something supernatural or fishy is going on you should check the insurance for that region. Why? Well, the data would certainly have shown that the amount of boats and planes wrecked in this particular area would have been way higher than in the surrounding areas. The insurance for boats and planes would reflect this by being more expensive. They are not a non-profit, supernatural phenomena would show up in their data as a risk. And yet, it is not more expensive to be insured throughout this region. This means that insurance companies know that it is not more dangerous to travel these waters than anywhere else.

I recently read a comment that home insurers in Florida are pulling out of the market. In current times, the fires are so prevalent that it is no longer in their best interest to even try and insure them. If you look at insurers as a simple canary in the coal mine, you might be more quick on the uptake of current trends than you realize. Insurers gathered their data, analyzed it and decided that the climate in Florida is and will be too volatile and destructive to insure. Maybe the people living there can ask themselves if it is still in their best interest to have their home in such a place.

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I sometimes wonder when I see some ads that are being displayed to me if they got any idea what my interests are. To be fair, I use plug-ins to block most of them and I almost always take the time to block or limit the cookies when I visit a website. I like to think about what they do know like my age and gender should be common knowledge by now. It is always fun to get some obscure ad and try to trace back why on earth this one is displayed to you.

Other times, I can see that I am being marketed to because of my behaviour. A few days ago, I started to see "Tinnitus checks" or "hearing aids" ads displayed below the videos. Meekly I lowered the volume, thinking that some signs should not be ignored.

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