AIA: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

It's been said that in certain professions, money can buy you any opinion you like. This is unhelpful if one seeks objectivity on a particular subject. Similarly, it seems there is no shortage of opinion about to why New Zealand has one of the worst life risks insurance take-up rates of all the OECD nations.

Even the the Financial Services Council (formerly the ISI) has recently added ‘under-insurance' to previous problematic vocabulary such as ‘churn'.

The extraordinary counter-statistic is that New Zealand's Canterbury earthquake ranks as one of the largest insured events in the world.  

Rather than join the hand-wringing, we thought it would help to ask the population at large what they think of insurance, and share these opinions with people charged, in their chosen occupation, with engaging with consumers or would-be consumers.