Insurance is a service that we lean on in times of crisis. But for victims and survivors of domestic abuse, that protection is not always available to them. Following up on the interview with Dr. Nicola Sharp-Jeffs - Founder & Chief Executive of Surviving Economic Abuse - this episode looks at how victims and survivors are struggling to access insurance, and what the sector can do about it. If you work in insurance and would like to know more about how your company can support victims and survivors of economic abuse, please do get in touch: feministfinancepodcast@gmail.com And you can find out more about economic abuse at survivingeconomicabuse.org
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Timestamped episode notes
00.37 A recap - what is economic abuse?
01:49 Introducing a project that is close to my heart - how can insurers support victims of abuse?
02:59 The story of Clare Throssell. How a cancelled home insurance policy left her unprotected
05:30 Victims and survivors of abuse struggle to get insurance
06:13 Details of insurance wording are leaving domestic abuse victims unable to claim on their insurance
08:26 Victim's private information can be put at risk
09:21 How policies can be taken out, canceled or changed without consent
10:11 Economic abuse is a mainstream issue that insurers must address
11:29 Changes to insurance policies and processes that could make all the difference for victims and survivors
12:52 Insurance wordings haven't changed for decades and weren't written with the reality of women's lives in mind
13:44 Helping insurance staff recognise abuse and support victims
14:51 Could you help us better support victims and survivors of abuse?
(00:08):
Welcome to the podcast that takes a feminist look at the world of money. My name is Alice Merry, and this is the Feminist Finance Podcast. So today's episode is a bit of a different one. Instead of an interview, I'm going to be telling you about a project that I've worked on, and a project that's very close to my heart. So, please do give the episode a listen, and let me know what you think.
(00:37):
If you were listening to the last episode, you would have heard me speak with Nicola Sharp-Jeffs. Nicola is the CEO of charity Surviving Economic Abuse. SEA is the only UK charity dedicated to raising awareness of and changing responses to economic abuse. So in case you didn't hear the last episode, let me give you a quick rundown of what economic abuse is.
(01:02):
Economic abuse is when a partner tries to control their partner by controlling their economic resources in some way. So this might be one partner preventing another for getting a job. It might be insisting that they take control of their earnings when they receive them. It might be coercing a partner to take out debt. And in reality, economic abuse is combined with all other kinds of abuse that are better well-known like emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. In fact, it's present in the majority of cases of domestic abuse. If you want to know more about it, I really recommend listening to the episode with Nicola. Nicola is an absolute world expert on this topic, and she has done fascinating work in the UK.
(01:49):
I wanted to take this episode to tell you about a project that I have been working on with Surviving Economic Abuse to see how they could work with insurers. Let me tell you about how this project got started by telling two stories.
(02:05):
The first is very simple. I started off my career working in insurance. I've done a lot of work in insurance. So when I got involved with the charity, it was clear that they had done a lot of work with banks. Surviving Economic Abuse had done fantastic work with banks, to help banks better protect and respond to the needs of victims of economic abuse. But up until that point, they hadn't worked with insurance companies.
(02:32):
I just felt that there must be an opening to work with insurance companies. Because insurance is a financial service that we lean on during our most difficult times in life. It's designed to protect us during our worst moments. So it's clear that getting insurance right is really important for victims of domestic abuse who are indeed going through, often, crisis points in their own lives.
(02:59):
The other story is the story of Claire Throssell, and this is an absolutely devastating story. So Claire had been in a relationship with her husband for very many years. He'd been very abusive, and she'd taken the decision to leave, and she'd moved out with her children. Her husband had remained living in their family home. One day, her husband lured their children into the family house and up into the attic on the promise of giving them some toys, and he burnt down the house with them inside, killing their two boys. And this was a really horrific story of domestic violence that became news in the UK, articles in several outlets, one which I read in the Guardian newspaper. And Claire has gone on to be an important advocate against this kind of abuse, and particularly, for protecting children.
(03:55):
And one small detail in the article I read in the Guardian caught my eye. It explained that, after the fire, the family home was completely destroyed, and Claire was stuck with a mortgage and nowhere to live. And the article explains that, before her husband carried out this murder, he had rung up the bank. He had told them that he was no longer responsible for the mortgage, that she would be, and he'd stopped renewing their house insurance so that they had no insurance on the house. And the article explains how it was only due to the good will and the help of her neighbors that she was able to rebuild and sell the house, because it wasn't insured, and she wasn't protected in any way.
(04:46):
So, this story made me realize that insurance was playing a key part in the experience of women who'd experienced domestic abuse, and made me even more determined to see that, with Surviving Economic Abuse, we could find a way to reach out to and connect with insurers.
(05:04):
So we decided to start by doing some research into how victims and survivors of abuse are currently experiencing difficulties with insurance. We looked into research that had been carried out around the globe, and we also did research in the UK speaking directly with survivors. We found that victims and survivors of abuse are struggling with insurance in several ways.
(05:30):
Firstly, some people are struggling to get insurance in the first place. So, we heard about one story in which a woman was being obsessively stalked by an abusive ex, who repeatedly followed her from one home to another, and would break in and damage her property. And this of course meant that she had a really high claims record on her house insurance. So, even after she was able to move somewhere new, move somewhere safe, and eventually even get the perpetrator in jail, she had such a bad claims record that insurance companies offered her a ridiculously high premium on house insurance, meaning that she was effectively unable to insure her home.
(06:13):
And it's not only when taking out insurance that victims and survivors have problems, there are serious issues when a victim of domestic violence tries to make claims. And this is because of two really important aspects of insurance wording. Okay, I know this sounds dull, but it's really important, and the impacts are really important. So firstly, when damage is caused by an ex-partner... Let's say you have house insurance on your own, for your own home. You've broken up with an ex-partner. If that ex-partner causes damage in that property, even in the case where a couple is separated, even in the case where they live separately, insurers in some cases insist on considering that person to still be a family member. And damage caused by family members is usually not included within an insurance policy. You cannot get paid for a claim for damage done by a family member.
(07:11):
And the second thing that we found an issue with was when an abusive ex-partner forces entry to a victim's house, and carries out damage. And people working in the violence against women and girls sector know very well how manipulative a perpetrator is, and how they may be able to force entry into a home without even having to resort necessarily to physical violence, but by using threats, perhaps of violence against the victim, against their children. And we found that insurers were refusing claims on damage caused by a perpetrator forcing their way into home in that way, because there weren't signs of physical violence.
(07:52):
And in both these cases, these wordings, the consideration by an insurance company of what counts as a family member and the consideration of what counts as force are really based on quite outdated assumptions about families, about relationships, and so on. And so, this is really just the need for insurers to reconsider their wording in the face of the realities of modern life and in the realities and a true understanding of what an abusive relationship looks like.
(08:26):
We saw a serious problem as well, where the automatic processes that insurers had in place were sometimes revealing very important private information that shouldn't have been revealed. So, when an abusive... When a person leaves an abuser, their privacy is so important. Their ability to maintain the secrecy of their new address, for example, is really important. But we saw where insurance policies were canceled or renewed or changed, automatic notifications might be sent out to both previous insureds, even when the victim had specifically requested for that not to happen. And again, this seemingly small detail has really important consequences. We saw cases where people would have to move or set up private security to protect themselves, because an insurer had inadvertently given away information about their new address to the perpetrator.
(09:21):
And a final important issue is around information and around control. So victims and survivors of abuse are struggling to get hold of information about their insurance. In some cases, people need to flee without full documentation, without ID, without documentation of the financial products they have.
(09:40):
And even more seriously, insurance policies are taken out, canceled or changed without the victim's consent. So we've seen this in the case that I mentioned of Claire right in the beginning. But we've also seen examples where somebody has taken out a car insurance online, put themselves at the name driver and their partner as the main insured and the person who's going to pay, complete with their credit card details. In some cases, the victims have real difficulties canceling these kinds of policies.
(10:11):
Sometimes, when I speak to people working in the insurance industry, and I talk about the research that we've done, there's a sense that this might be quite a niche issue. And maybe you're listening and thinking, this sounds quite niche, small details about policy changes. But in reality, this is an enormous risk, and it's faced by a really large chunk of the population.
(10:38):
The insurance association in the UK carried out an analysis of the most important problems getting in the way of young women's financial security. They identified 12 problems, and domestic violence and abuse was one of the most important problems they identified. They found that young people up to the age of 25, among that set, over 12% of people have already experienced abuse in adulthood. And one in five adults will experience abuse during their lifetimes. So this is really a mainstream issue affecting very many women who will depend on insurance as an economic resource to be there for them.
(11:20):
And so, insurers really have to do everything they can to make sure they fulfill their role in supporting financial security among this group.
(11:29):
So, what can be done about all of this? There are some quite simple changes that insurers can make to better respond to the needs of victims and survivors of abuse. Let's start with a simple one. One thing that is very difficult for victims is the need to keep explaining and reexplaining their story and their situation to various representatives of any institution. And we've already seen in the banking sector that one solution to this is, with the victim's permission, to record their story, to write some simple notes about it, and get this flagged to every person who then deals with that customer in the bank. The same thing could certainly be done by insurance companies.
(12:13):
There are also some changes that need to be made in reassessing outdated policy wordings. And it's vital that insurance policy wordings reflect the reality of modern families, modern relationships, including the reality of abusive relationships. Somebody who is separated from a person, living separately to them, cannot reasonably be considered a family member. And someone that someone has a restraining order against can't reasonably be considered somebody invited into their house. We need our policy wording to reflect these kind of realities.
(12:52):
It's not that insurers are intending to exclude victims of abuse, it's not that they intend their insurance wordings to create problems for them. Rather, these wordings haven't been changed in decades, and they simply weren't written with the reality, frankly, of women's lives in mind.
(13:12):
I would encourage you if you work in insurance, or if you don't and you're really geeky and you want to do this, pull out any insurance policy you have or any you've sold, and take a look at who is considered a family member. Is that made explicit in the policy? Who is allowed to make changes to the policy, and who needs to be informed? You might be surprised that not all policy members necessarily need to be informed, and you might be surprised who can make changes. These all have really important consequences in situations of abuse.
(13:44):
Finally, training staff on understanding and recognizing signs of abuse is absolutely vital. And in other sectors, staff are trained to recognize red flags, and it's really important that this happens in the insurance sector too. Surviving Economic Abuse have found that staff are remarkably receptive to this kind of training, and really capable of providing service to customers when they understand economic abuse, and they know how it impacts their customers.
(14:15):
And it's important to bear in mind that this is really doable. There are many sectors that have already taken these kinds of steps. The banking sector in the UK, for example, has explicitly addressed economic abuse through UK Finance, threir Code of Practice, as we talked about in the last episode with Nicola. And there are numerous banks and building societies in the UK that have signed up to these kind of principles for supporting victims and survivors, and in several other countries as well. So, there's no reason why the insurance sector can't be doing the same.
(14:51):
Surviving Economic Abuse is currently looking for insurance companies to collaborate with on further developing its guidelines for supporting victims and to work with them to put in place measures. So, if by any chance you work for an insurance company and you would be interested, please do reach out.
(15:10):
Otherwise, I hope you find this episode interesting. Please do remember to share it with anyone you think might be interested, particularly anyone working in the insurance sector, and subscribe. Leave us a rating, leave us a review. It makes me so happy to read them. And I look forward to talking to you next time. Bye for now.