Notable quotables and other irrelevancies

One of the variables this time around was whether to include my wife as named driver. She's a learner driver, albeit one who claims her learning has been fatally impaired by my teaching. For some reason, she finds it off-putting the way, when she's at the wheel, I keep a grip on the passenger door handle so I can jump if necessary. She also insists I undermine her confidence at key moments by comments such as: "No! It's clockwise on the roundabouts!"

The learning project has been on hold due to motherhood. So we were unsure about the need to name her on the policy since, with her provisional licence, this would be a big added cost. Or so we thought, until one company totted the figures and announced it would be £7 extra if she wasn't included. "I know that sounds ridiculous," said the insurance person, "but the statistics show a lower rate of claims on policies with named-driver spouses".

One of the harbingers of spring in our house is the renewal letter from the motor insurance company. It arrives every year with the daffodils, announcing the competitive new premium the company is pleased to offer for the next 12 months. Whereupon, in another seasonal ritual, I express sentiments to the effect that "if that's competitive, I'm Roy Keane!" Then I bin the letter and embark on a telephone tour of the insurance sector in a vain attempt to find a better offer.

My current insurer has been running an advertising campaign on the theme of "great quotes from famous people. A typical ad opens with a French accent: "Eet ees with mah brush ah make luhve - a great quote from Pierre Auguste Renoir! For another great quote, ring . . ." But when my quote arrived recently, I thought it fell well short of greatness. I wasn't sure it was original, either. It sounded very like a quote I remembered from years ago, in fact, before I had a no-claims bonus.

When I complained, the assistant was apologetic, but blamed a general increase in premiums on the level of pay-outs last year. She was right, as I found out. But another problem with insurance policies is that you always know someone who has a cheaper one. He's about your age, he passed his test the same year, his car is similar,and, furthermore, you have a vague memory that he tail-ended a BMW somewhere. Yet his premium is £200 less. Is it his star sign, you wonder?

So this year, like most years, I rang around the insurance companies, an experience slightly less enjoyable than dental root treatment. I answered the many questions, some of them apparently irrelevant, as truthfully as I could: "Full licence, no claims, Aquarius, 17-inch neck," and so on. Sometimes, there would be a pause when I mentioned my occupation, and I imagined the insurance person writing "journalist" with a red marker and holding it up for the actuaries to laugh at, but that's probably just a victim complex.

I also gave them all the information they needed about my car, which must be close to the insurers' ideal. Road-worthy without being very valuable, it has both an alarm and an immobiliser. (Ideally, for insurance purposes, you want a cheap car with an expensive security system; although you need to strike a balance, because Dublin car thieves are so sophisticated now that if you make it too attractive, they'll steal your alarm and leave the vehicle.)

One of the variables this time around was whether to include my wife as named driver. She's a learner driver, albeit one who claims her learning has been fatally impaired by my teaching. For some reason, she finds it off-putting the way, when she's at the wheel, I keep a grip on the passenger door handle so I can jump if necessary. She also insists I undermine her confidence at key moments by comments such as: "No! It's clockwise on the roundabouts!"

The learning project has been on hold due to motherhood. So we were unsure about the need to name her on the policy since, with her provisional licence, this would be a big added cost. Or so we thought, until one company totted the figures and announced it would be £7 extra if she wasn't included. "I know that sounds ridiculous," said the insurance person, "but the statistics show a lower rate of claims on policies with named-driver spouses".

Anyway, all these facts were fed into each computer and, after a dramatic pause, the computer produced its quote. Some of the quotes were undeniably humorous, and some were so big I wondered if the insurance person had a computer at all or if, like Renoir, he was using a brush. But none was cheaper than my own insurer, to which I crawled humbly back, broken yet again by the system.

You only have to look at the Yellow Pages to see one reason premiums are going up. Full-page ads for personal injury solicitors are bumper-to-bumper, with heroic portraits of the sharp-suited lawyers, many resembling door-to-door evangelists. But insurance is a murky world to the lay-person, and until some transparency is introduced, there will a suspicion that much of our money is going on Cuban cigars.

You probably read on Wednesday that the Government-backed body investigating insurance costs was demanding, by the end of this week, full information from the industry on premiums and claims. The deadline was necessary, the report said, because earlier data offered by the Irish Insurance Federation had proved "unreliable".

I have two points to make about this, in conclusion. Firstly, furnishing unreliable information is such a basic sin in the context of insurance that when it comes to the industry's future claims to credibility, we should refuse to pay out. Secondly, I believe it's time the insurance companies were asked a number of hard questions. I have no particular questions in mind, but some of them should be apparently irrelevant. They can quote me on that.