Penny Black's Insurance Week - 19 September 2013

‘Girly’ insurers often seek to deter male customers by using the colour pink, sparkles, and the occasional picture of a kitten. Penny has always found such tactics rather curious – not least due to the novel concept of marketing to deter, rather than entice, customers – so she was pleased to discover that when Girls Drive Better was unveiled in July, its first customer was a man. And one from Northern Ireland, at that. Penny herself will steer clear of such firms – she’s not sure a telematics box is the right way to get cover for her monster truck, even if it is pink.

Meanwhile, one’s eyebrows were raised when analysts at Columbus Direct said they had found links between star signs and insurance claims, with Gemini, Cancer and Pisces the signs most often associated with travel insurance claims. According to the ‘facts’ of this ‘study’, Aquarians make 92% more claims for delay than Cancerians, while Librans make the most claims for lost passports. One suspects some people need to learn the difference between correlation and causation.    

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This article was published in the 19 September edition of Post magazine.