Insurance not a luxury, but it comes after basic needs

As it is the case in other modes of financing, the take up of products in the financial is stratified, and thus insurance comes after basic needs and a few other matters besides. Even for those higher up in the consumer hierarchy to afford cars, often they have third party insurance rather than comprehensive insurance, and indeed not many have life insurance either, which should go together.

Those whom the usual term ‘the man in the street’ refers, insurance is another man’s territory, scarcely coming up in day to day discussion or ‘musings,’ as to when one shall have an insurance card for this or that belonging. One kind of insurance is however more or less compulsory, namely fire insurance by having kits for dowsing flames if such an accident comes up, but actual fire insurance is a different matter. Yet any house owner, whether rented or privately occupied, needs to think of such a facility.

That means there is space for education in relation to taking up insurance products, as there is a stratum in society that ought to have insurance and aren’t doing do, and often regret when things like a fire outbreak come about, not to speak of motor vehicle accidents. As a matter of fact all of us need insurance products of one way or another, as most accidents or drawbacks which can pull us backwards in life are predicable in a way, in the sense that we know they can happen. For instance social security is compulsory for any properly employed person as if such person lacks insurance it is problematic to make a transition in life.

Admittedly basic needs are vital and come first in how people spend their hard earned cash, but quite often stashing something by the corner saves one from a rainy day, but it isn’t always in our outlook to do so. Instead of calling for more education, let us see how this can be done via small groups as in women’s uplifting in earlier periods before there were any banks, and they do so even at present. Maybe there is a gender problem, that while women are easily brought together to think about the future and participate in small savings and credit groups, which are disguised insurance products, men are harder to motivate.

That is why some banks and insurance firms are coming up with sweeteners to literally lure more people, especially men, to deposits with that orientation. Not much can be said as of now as most people play that kind of game with expectations of quick earning, which reaffirms the problem where it stood at first. But when women take up more of those products, the children will at least be protected; that is good enough.