Insurance is not inherently complex, technical, or difficult to understand, and the idea that it must be so is one of the most successful myths the industry has ever sold.
At its core, insurance is a simple transaction where risk is assessed, priced, and shared, yet somewhere along the way that clarity has been buried beneath layers of jargon, obstacles and deliberate confusion.
For ordinary people trying to insure their car, home, business or bike, the experience often feels less like a service and more like a test of endurance.
You cannot email cleanly and expect a clear answer, you cannot speak to the same person twice, and you are repeatedly asked to restate information that has already been provided, sometimes multiple times in the same conversation.
When you do receive written communication, it is wrapped in language so dense and defensive it feels designed to discourage reading rather than encourage understanding.
This is not accidental.
Insurance companies are among the most profitable financial institutions in the country, and complexity is one of the tools that protects those margins.
Confusion delays decisions, delays weaken resolve, and tired customers are far more likely to accept poor terms simply to get the process finished.
Every extra hoop, every ambiguous phrase, every refusal to put something plainly in writing shifts the balance of power away from the customer and back to the insurer.
Even basic requests, such as a straightforward quotation, a written confirmation, or a clear explanation of exclusions, can become an exhausting exercise in persistence.
Phone calls are routed through layers of handlers with limited authority, email addresses are hidden or deflected, and responsibility is passed sideways until momentum is lost.
It begins to feel less like incompetence and more like strategy.
When something goes wrong, the same complexity that frustrated you at the start becomes the shield used against you at the end.
Suddenly the small print matters, the definitions tighten, and what you reasonably believed you were covered for is quietly reclassified as an exception.
The worst outcome is rarely the result of a single bad decision, but of a thousand small moments where clarity was denied and assumptions were allowed to stand.
The industry insists this complexity exists to protect consumers, yet it overwhelmingly protects the institutions themselves.
A genuinely customer focused system would prioritise plain language, clear written communication, and accountability, not endless disclaimers and shifting goalposts.
It would not require people to chase answers, repeat themselves, or feel foolish for asking basic questions about products they are legally required to hold.
Insurance does not need to be simple minded, but it does need to be honest.
The fact that so many people share the same sense of frustration, suspicion and exhaustion tells its own story.
When a service leaves customers feeling confused, mistrustful and powerless at every stage, that is not a failure of understanding, it is a failure of intent.
And until insurers are forced to value clarity as highly as profit, this will remain a system designed not to serve, but to extract.
