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I don't know anything special about this subject, someone correct me if I'm wrong. so I thought the actual role of insurance is to cover the case where the dif
by logicallee 11y ago
I don't know anything special about this subject, someone correct me if I'm wrong.
so I thought the actual role of insurance is to cover the case where the difference from the arithmetic average cost (i.e. average of all cases, consisting overwhelmingly of neutral cases, but with some rare negative possibilities) and the negative event is so large that the rare negative event would be life-changing but the average case is trivial.
for example, it might make total sense for a tiny startup to take out a policy against a total, multi-day AWS outage. This is because that event is basically impossible to occur, but if it did it might bankrupt them immediately. (You can use your imagination as to why this might be.)
So the basic role of insurance is to reduce the variation - get things closer to the arithmetic average case.
But does this work if people don't know the average case?
It is easy to find nationwide accident rates, one could make an educated guess about it. But if insurance companies are tracking your every turn and coming up with a unique offer - what is to say it is remotely fair?
How can anyone tell if their insurance comapny, "You, personally, have driving habits that give you a 10% chance of having an accident this year, and it's remarkable that you haven't had any in the past 8 years you've been driving. You've simply been lucky."
If they're a big-data insurance company, who are you to argue? After all, your friends have been in accidents, you know it's risky.
What I'm getting at is there is huge information-asymmetry if the insurance company has access to a lot more information than the person buying the insurance does!
What's to keep them from selling you tsunami-insurance at Japanese or Californian rates, even though you live in Minnesota?
In the status quo, it's because you KNOW that you live in Minnesota. But if your every choice is being tracked, doesn't that assumption go out the window?
Of course, some kind of a legal requirement to share their actuarial calculations with you would never work, because there is not a company in the world that wouldn't figure out how to lie - you can't get companies to share their profit margins or to keep to a certain profit margin, it's just literally impossible. (It would be like getting your SO not to think of anyone else during sex, no matter how fleetingly. That is just not a possible goal, and I use this analogy because companies' internal calculations are similar to what is going on in someone's head.)
So if private companies can't be held to a profit margin, is the answer state-issued insurance? This would be beneficial in many ways: for example, if someone's behavior is so risky that their average case is pretty bad, then perhaps the state can still choose to subsidize them from less risky customers. A private company might choose to fire them as a customer (or offer them an unaffordable rate.)
The difference is, when prices are close to unaffordable, can insurance companies mislead customers into thinking that it is because they, personally, really are that risky?
How do we stop this? I think the answer is to simply not allow this level of personalization.
- rconti 11y agoThat's a really, REALLY good question. I wonder how state insurance commissioners let insurance companies not share their data or models? Likely because, at this point, it's used to calculate discounts, not base rates. This will definitely become an issue.
- evanwolf 11y ago@logicallee, I love your point about information asymmetry and trust. State insurance regulators (not always active, funded, or competent) are supposed to assure that rates are actuarially justified: historical evidence, large enough pools to share risk, causality, and statistical validity. They are theoretically intended to pierce the mysterious veil insurers use for pricing. Here's hoping state and provincial regulators step up their game at least as fast as the insurers.
- caskance 11y agoA 15 minute call could save you 15% or more on car insurance by switching to Geico.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y agoWell, the idea is that the market takes care of lies. If a different insurer can correctly predict that a lower premium is sufficient to cover your risk, they should try to sell their product to you at a lower price to gain you as a customer and thus increase their revenue. Now, that does not mean that it would be fair. Insurance doesn't care about fairness. They balance premiums with modeled risk, not with actual risk.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- IanCal 11y agoThe core argument against this would, I guess, be simply that someone else would sell it cheaper. Insurance is extremely easy to switch and there are multiple people offering it. Everyone has to buy it, so there's definitely a huge market, and it's not a monopoly. > What's to keep them from selling you tsunami-insurance at Japanese or Californian rates, even though you live in Minnesota? Nothing, but if people are paying way over the odds for it, why wouldn't someone else come in and sell it cheaper? > So if private companies can't be held to a profit margin, is the answer state-issued insurance? Quite possibly, but how palatable this is depends on the distribution of the thing you're insuring. Healthcare, for example, is something that seems to work pretty well being state funded. Helicopter insurance might draw more ire. Cars are a hard one here (UK). They're not universally owned or needed, but are common. And then what type of insurance? Just third party for free? Well then there's still the same issue with all the other options. > How do we stop this? I think the answer is to simply not allow this level of personalization. I think ensuring that your data is not held by a single insurer but owned by you is important, not a lack of any data. This should come with the ability to migrate your driving data between insurers, so that anyone can quickly get a quote from any insurer. Otherwise you have a lock-in problem where competing insurers don't know enough about each others customers to be able to offer decent quotes.