Reading Insurance Junk in the Dead of the Night


i'm up at 5am reading and trying to understand shit like this:

"This limit is the most the insurer must pay for the sum of all damages under Coverage A—bodily injury and property damage and Coverage C—medical payments. Although a separate aggregate limit applies to products-completed operations claims and those claims for bodily injury and property damage that do not arise of out the products-completed operations hazard, the each occurrence limit does apply to all sums paid under Coverage A."

up at 5am because:
I napped from 4pm to midnight.
woke up temporarily in total darkness and thought i had a blackout again.
took a few minutes to realised i had to switch on the lights for the lights to be on.

reading junk because:

chinese bosses trying to renew their business insurance.
they took out their official insurance papers and asked if i understood it.
all they needed to know was the answer to one simple question:
'in the event a group of 4 pple get food poisoning, how much coverage does the policy give?'

i flipped through the pile of papers and all they had were terminologies, dollar signs and crap.
i couldn't even find the phone number of the insurance agent.

so anyway, they gave me the pile of papers and asked if i can call the agent and get the answer to the simple question.
Suspecting that talking to the agent (managed to google for his phone number) will give me more headaches than answers to the one simple question,

i decided to look for answers online.

tamade.
$#$%$(*(^*&%^$

like my law professor used to say
"why do they make legal statements so complicated? they try to cover everything and add in all the 'hereby' and 'thereafter' until no one understands what's going on anymore. i say keep it simple!"

they make it so blardy convulated.
i have 6 big terms to understand.
managed to get 2 of them down pat.
the other 4 is more kana sai because they're inter-related.
claiming for one affects the claim for another but sometimes can claim for two

shit stuff

doesn't help that i'm doing this at 5am, dazed and bleary
-------------------------------------

that's why a good agent is critical, i guess
to explain all these junk in laymen's terms and make them easier to understand
if i had the time to go through all these junk i'd be an agent myself
then again beware that some agents are just winging it

i've met a couple of agents
and they keep giving me the cheat sheet questionaires to do
i think i ask very tough questions
not because i'm trying to be ngiao
but because i'm genuinely interested to know what's happening so i can have some hand in the decision making process

the analogy i gave to one of the agents, so she doesn't think i'm undermining her role, was:

"it's like going to the doctor. ultimately he has the experience and theoretical expertise, so i'll listen to him. but i'll also want to read up and know abt my illness as much as i can, so i can have an idea of what he's basing his decision on, and ask questions if i have any.

you're the agent and so you're the expert here. i'm asking all these questions not because i want to be difficult, but because i don't know much abt this field and i want to know what's happening."

by asking questions, probing deeper and deeper into the issue
you can tell if the agent really knows his stuff or just anyhow hantam one
usually i'll feel quite bad cos i'm not trying to burst their ego or anything
and make the whole situation awkward
i just want to know, that's all

so the cheat sheet questionaire is great
for pple who want the agent to handle everything for them
just fill in the cheat sheet and they come up with a nice plan for you
you don't need to think, don't need to be stressed
i can see the appeal of that

but just as the doctor handles my health
the agent handles my money
so i want to have a more active role in it
everyone makes mistakes, even experts
and i hesitate to call every agent a financial expert
--------------------------------

Many of us in the juggling group have backgrounds in engineering or computer science and stuff
and some of them have dabbled at being insurance agents at one point or other
so i remember one of those times we were taking a juggling break and sitting around and one of them was trying to explain insurance policies to us
He was very analytical himself (which i think is probably why he found it hard to reach to the masses)
and we were all there crunching numbers and drawing pie charts and debating where the company gets its profits from

"why do you need to know how the company gets profits?"
"because it will not do business at a loss. so it's squeezing money from me somewhere, and rightfully so. if i know where, then i know how much. i don't mind paying for the service, but i want to know how much i'm paying."

so we kept calculating numbers
until Willy quipped from the background,
"and that's why they say, don't sell insurance to engineers. they ask too much and like to see numbers. For many pple, if you start explaining numbers in detail, they get switched off."


i'm looking for pple who can explain this junk in layman's terms but with details
i don't want a cheat sheet questionaire to blanket everything
haven't found one yet
someone should plug this shortage in the market

back to reading more junk.
i'm not annoyed i have to read this, i'm annoyed they make it so incomprehensible.