The Case of the Cut-Rate Insurance Lady.

We lost many people in 2015. To me, one of the saddest passings was that of baseball legend Yogi Berra. Most of us know that Yogi had a number of quotable sayings attributed to him that were known as “Berra-isms”.

Contrary to popular belief, most of these sayings were not funny in and of themselves, but it was often Yogi’s matter-of-fact delivery that added a unique brand of humor to the point he was making, thereby causing the statement to be funny.

One such Berra-ism stays with me on an almost-daily basis: “You can observe a lot merely by watching.” Funny? Perhaps not if you study the statement. For it is presumed that one has to be watching in one particular direction in order to make an observation. However, I found during the month of December, 2015 I was able to observe a great deal without first having to watch for one solitary thing.

Therefore, to add my accumulated archive of year-end stories such as “The $8,000 Batch of Cookies” and “The $25,000 Visit by the Unemployed Niece and Her Perpetually (and hopelessly) Floundering Mother”, I can now add to the archive “The Case of the Cut-Rate Insurance Lady”.

By way of explanation, I serve as Trustee for a testamentary trust for the daughter of a beloved client and friend. My dear friend provided a trust and home for his daughter (whom we will call “Sue”) so that part of her life would never be subject to the vicissitudes of whatever else might be taking place on a given day. I view my responsibility seriously, constantly asking myself as to what her father would do, (if living) with respect to looking after his daughter. The relationship has had a bump every now and then, but I am pleased to report that all works well.

So fast forward to about ten days ago, when I received a text message from Sue. She told me that she was just visited by a local insurance agent and received a “really neat price discount on insuring her home and car in a package”. Since I have nothing to do with her car, I said that was all fine, but I had to gently remind her that she could not insure the house as she is not its owner. I asked for the agent’s number, and called her to explain.

At first, the initial part of the conversation was a study in the dangers of assumptions. However, dealing in the best faith possible, I asked to review the proposal that was sent over to Sue. The agent complied, and I studied it assiduously. However, it became immediately clear to me that the “great cost savings” achieved for home insurance was entirely due to the result of dropping the replacement costs of the property to a level so low that the property was dangerously underinsured. Based on my extremely non-technical assessment of what it would cost in order to replace such a home in Fairfield County, CT, I estimated that we were traveling at about 75% of where we needed to be. This fact was confirmed by a girl from the neighborhood I was raised in with a husband in the contracting business. (In point of fact, he assured me that these replacement limits were more like half of where they needed to be).

So, I called the agent, and asked for her to run new projections with the replacement provisions I placed in my present policy, and to change the insurance carrier involved. She questioned me, indignantly asking why I insisted on being “over-insured”. Without speculating on her motives, I told her that it was my responsibility as a trustee to meet replacement cost, with this cost increasing exponentially in the event of a natural disaster. She was also taken aback at my request for a different insurance carrier, as with all of this craziness I was now concerned that Sue may have possibly fallen prey to a year end “blue light special” on insurance policies, whereby the carrier chosen by the agent was handing out some kind of favors to agents that were writing policies, regardless of policy quality. (Even though that type of subject is usually said in whispers, I wanted to remove any possibility of any self-interest outweighing the interests of the insured and the beneficiary).

As of this moment, the silence received from the insurance agent is deafening.

The moral to the above story is not to say that all insurance agents or companies (or all of any one other category of professionals for that matter) are inherently dishonest. But rather, all of this was a reminder to me as to the importance of detailed observation in any matter of purchasing goods and services. For only through the cost of time and the application of attention, can countless hours and money be saved.

(I guess Yogi Berra was right after all).

Happy New Year, Everyone. And Rest in Peace, Yog.

Tony De Angelo