Keep track of Santa’s progress across the world’s skies this year on American space agency NASA’a dedicated Santa tracking website at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/index.html. Avoid your children accidentally being awake when the guy in the big red suite arrives at your house by watching his progress on-line in real time. The site will be up an running from about 4pm on Christmas Eve – not sure if that’s American time!
Pets can be great. They provide companionship, affection, entertainment,
security together with giving you a focus for your attention. It’s all good… or is it? Fleas, smells, house training, vets bills, heartache.
I guess every pet owner weighs up the pros and cons of ownership and for eveyone the balance falls in a deffirent place, but responsible pet ownership will cost you, with the costs of food, holiday accomodation, vets bills (that one’s been mentioned before) etc. Obviously you can minimise the costs of unexpected bills with pet insurance.
Actually, what prompted this blog was a brilliant website I just found givng a funny angle to cat ownership. Click here for more…
JSW’s blog, formerly at www.insureblog.co.uk has now moved to our website. I guess that if you’re reading this then you’ve already found it!
Our aim is to continue to comment on the important issues of the day in an insurance context, relating real world news and events to how they affect or are affected by the insurance world. JSW Insurance Services is made up of a team of dedicated insurance professionals specialising in commercial insurance for businesses in the SME sector, and in property insurance in the buy to let marketplace.
Please bookmark our blog for regular updates and comment, and go to our property and buy-to-let focused blog at www.landlordsure.co.uk/blog for comment on all things related to the buy-to-let business.
Landlordsure.co.uk is JSW's specialist brand for buy-to-let professionals
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has shown its teeth in a recent ruling regarding the selling (or miss-selling as they saw it) of Payment Protection Insurance by high street insurance giant Swintons.
In a landmark case they admitted to miss-selling hundreds of thousands of policies in a 16 month period between 2006 and 2008. Swintons have been fined just over £3/4 million and will have to offer premium refunds to 350,000 policyholders.
It’s not the first such case and won’t be the last – it just goes to show that you’re never too big to be treated harshly by the authorities. The FSA are desperate to maintain a clean image for the insurance industry and will take no prisoners in their efforts to do so.
Click here for a more in depth view on this...
Insurance fraudsters have been jailed in the latest “Crash for Cash” scam to come to court. A the leader of a gang centred around Bolton in Lancashire caused over 90 “accidents” convincing the other driver each time that they were actually at fault in order for the gang to make a fraudulent insurance claim.
The crashing spree carried on between 2005 & 2008 with many of the collisions taking place on a single roundabout. The investigation was a joint exercise between the police and the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB).
It just goes to show that the persistence of the authorities pays off. Click here for more details…
Fact of the month in the latest edition of the CIM’s (Chartered Institute of Marketing)Marketer magazine is that 71% of people are influenced by a recommendation from a friend when making purchasing decisions.
Not hugely surprising you may say, but compare that with only 63% who use their own past experience as a main influencer and it’s probably more significant.
Advertising only influences 15% according to the same article.
It just goes to show, word of mouth is most definitely the most effective form of marketing – how you go about generating that positive word of mouth is the challenge of course!
There’s never any harm in blowing your own trumpet, so I’ll indulge myself here. I recently entered my own insurance brand, Landlordsure.co.uk into the inaugural Landlord and Buy-to-Let awards the results of which were announced during a gala dinner at Birmingham’s NEC on Friday 16th October. We ended up being a commended finalist (effectively 2nd place – not 1st but still pretty good!) and even got our picture taken with TV presenter Konnie Huq (I’m the one on the right).
It was a great evening right in the
middle of a really good marketing event for us and many other exhibitors, all businesses selling services into the buy-to-let marketplace. The exhibition was the Landlords and Buy-to-Let Show, also at the NEC.
I’d strongly recommend any business to consider exhibiting at conferences, shows and exhibitions as a way of interacting directly with their target market. Just be sure that you have a clear set of objectives from each event in terms of the type, quality and quantity of leads that you want/need in order to not just cover the costs of the event, but make the whole exercise worth while. It also helps to have some sort of gimmick to attract attention to your stand, and to make sure that you’re remembered after the event.
Relaxed business meetings a long way from home are getting to be a more realistic proposition as hotel prices have dropped by up to 33% over the last year (according to a BBC report).
This must mean that the option is now more realistic to stay over after a meeting (or before if it’s an early start) rather than risking that potentially dangerous late night or early morning drive. Removing the stress of the drive will undoubtedly improve your performance in your meeting or interview.
Staying in a hotel won’t leave you out of touch with the office either with broadband WI-FI hot spots readily available and the option of mobile Internet now realistically priced. As a commercial insurance provider this means that we’ll always be able to give clients an excellent service, wherever in the country they happen to be.
It’s interesting to note that, for the first time, the population of Britain is now more than 61 million. Even more interestingly, 1.3 million of our fellow Brits are over 85!
The population also swelled with 791,000 new babies last year. The overall population rose by .7% from the previous year.
Wow! We are living on a crowded island.
It’s a good job that we have a legal, social and health care system that’s second to none to keep us all living in the style to which we’ve become accustomed. A thriving business community, even in the current recession conditions, always helps of course. Confidence is high that the current economic climate is a blip that will soon be corrected returning us all to prosperity.
That said, some businesses will have fallen by the wayside when this is all over, but those business and business people that are properly protected with high quality insurance cover will be better placed to keep their heads above the parapet.
Good protection breeds confidence which in turn breeds good business. And the expanding population needs good business to re-start the economy and carry on improving our standard of living .
For more on the UK’s latest population statistics click here.
Sometimes you do not need insurance – the attached article from the Daily Mail highlights the extent of the Sale of Goods Act extending protection to consumers for up to six years from the date of purchase.
