The Captain Talks Insurance

I’ve called myself an Insurance professional. I’ve also been known to embellish. I do in fact work for an insurance company. And though my work has been called amateurish, they do pay me in legal tender to do it, so, like an athlete, I qualify as a professional. But please don’t ask me what I do for a living and I promise not to ask you to read your insurance policy.

They sent me away down South for three weeks when I first started working just so I could study insurance policies. But here I am, twelve years later, and I still can’t quite figure out what they mean. They are written in English. Or at least, I recognize most of the words as English words, with some foreign looking ones interspersed. I am going to try and define for you some of these foreign sounding words using practical, real life analogies to test my mettle as a true Insurance professional. So here it comes: The Captain’s real life parable of Insurance terminology.

The Parable of Dumbass and his “Friends”

Remember when you were in High School and the pressure to have a girlfriend was greater than the need to actually like her? You complained to all your friends about the human Peril and all the damage she was doing to your psyche until one concerned comrade agreed to take on your pain one Friday evening by taking her off your hands. This is called Indemnification. And remember how they went to the movies and she went straight into his hands, literally? This was the payment for the promise to take on your pain, or what we in the biz call Premium. And remember how they went back to her parent’s bedroom and did it and were so hammered they forgot to use birth control? Shortly thereafter a Paternity claim ensued. And even though he never intended for this to happen, your buddy was now committed to paying that claim. In fancy Insurance language, this poor bastard was Estopped. And remember how pissed you were at your other friends who so generously supplied the Wild Irish Rose used by the Estopped? How you tried to exact revenge on them only to discover that the right to Subrogate now legally belonged to – no freakin’ kidding – the Estopped? And how you planned for weeks to exact revenge on the Estopped and the Peril and ambushed them at a Lamaze class with water balloons and an M80? And how they made a claim against your parents’ Homeowners Liability policy and how the claim was denied because it was an Intentional Act? And how Mom and Dad kicked your sorry butt out on the street?

Thus sayeth The Captain: Aramaic is easier to interpret than an Insurance policy.

Yours with all new friends,

The Captain