So the insurance industry should have a greater role in helping people deal with unemployment and ill-health. Apparently, action is needed to reduce burden on the State, says Working Group.
Furthermore, there should be a greater role for the insurance industry in helping people deal with risks such as unemployment and ill-health, the Insurance Industry Working Group, co-chaired by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, along with Andrew Moss, Group Chief Executive of Aviva.
In ‘Vision for the insurance industry in 2020′, the Working Group moans that there is evidence that many people are not saving enough for their needs and do not have sufficient insurance to cover them against the risks they face, and that both these trends place a burden on the State, by increasing the need for benefit payments.
The Government currently provides around 64 per cent of the UK’saddressable ‘risk management’ market for individual and occupational pensions, healthcareand long term care and income protection funded through tax and national insurance on a ‘pay as you go’ basis.
And they further whimper that over time, the challenge of funding these costs will rise, due, for example, to a decline in the relative size of the working age population, and that this raises the question of where the optimal balance between private and state provision should lie in the future and how much emphasis should be placed on personal responsibility.
Oh yes, personal responsibility….. here we go…again.
‘More can be done’, they exclaim regarding the insurance industry.
Where it is commercially viable’, to act in partnership with the government to explore whether private sector solutions could be helpful in areas of social insurance.
The document is available here.
What is all this about? I mean, in the words of Stewie Griffin, what the deuce..?
Perhaps the state retirement pension scheme is worth thinking about. £70 billion each year paid out to pensioners with very little in the way of administrative cost.
It is run by junior and middle level civil servants based in the North East of England (i.e. they don’t even get London weighting).Very cost effective. Not perfect. It does not pay out much but then you don’t pay in much in the form of national insurance contributions. Women get a raw deal from it but that can be dealt with relatively easily by the appropriate use of credits for maternity and carer breaks. In fact this already happens to a limited extent now. These remedies could be introduced with little disturbance to the general nature of the scheme or to it’s administration.
Of course the problem with all this as your unfriendly local neo-liberal will point out is…no one is getting rich out of al this! 5% of GNP and not a millionaire in sight!
If the benefit system, the health service, social services and social housing are added up along with more minor components of the welfare state such as legal aid are added up and you have a nice juicy target of several hundred billion…lots of lots of bonuses (bonii if you are D Cameron Esq) for those who like to rob the poor to give to the rich.
Just finally…Separate though connected, Serco (that private company with its grubby paws in lots of financial pies) has made a massive profit. Now there’s a surprise….
