A message from the mutuals
AFM's Chief Exec outlines the outlook for UK mutuals in 2019
Article published in COVER magazine 13/02/19
At its heart, insurance is about problem-solving: protect my income if I can't work; replace my mobile phone if I lose it; save for my retirement; even helping the earth cope with the implications of climate change.
Insurance people have a reputation of being staid and conservative, but actually they are risk-takers, innovators and have a better track record of predicting the future than any of Russell Grant, Nostradamus or often the Bank of England.
Lloyd's coffee shop in London in the late seventeenth century lays proper claim to the early emergence of insurance as an industry. But it was mutuality that promoted the wider adoption of insurance during the eighteenth century, with the establishment of societies where working people could come together to put aside money for ill-health or to pay out on their death. And right up to the 1940s, before the introduction of the NHS, mutual societies were the foremost way in which working people safeguarded their future.
Mutuality
Mutuals, by which I mean organisations owned by their customers, rather than external shareholders, remain an important presence in the insurance industry today, both in the UK and internationally. [Read the full article]