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11:45am Friday 18th April 2008

First published April 18, 2008

I'VE got a very outdated view of the insurance industry.

It always conjures up an image of smartly-dressed middle-aged men in half-moon specs sitting hunched up over large leatherbound books.

I imagine them checking and double checking figures for, say, the average life expectancy of a 47-year-old non-smoking father-of-two who works in a widget factory.

Of course it's nothing like that.

But the whole operation is still built on solid foundations of mathematical calculation - even if it happens on computers rather than in dusty rooms filled with books.

Which is why it's interesting that one insurance company - Allianz - has said that if you're caught using a mobile phone while driving, it plans to bump up your premiums by about a third.

That brings it in line with the way the firm treats people with dangerous driving convictions.

But, you might argue, surely they're just cashing in on the fact the police are trying to catch more mobile phone users at it - it's just a way to charge more.

Well, in fairness, in the last couple of years, many insurers have decided NOT to increase premiums for drivers flashed once by a speed camera, so it's not all one-way traffic.

And if anyone knows about crashes, it's the insurance industry.

Every crunch of bodywork is inevitably followed by the crunching of numbers as the blame is apportioned and details of the crash are archived.

The more expensive the crash - and crashes involving serious injuries or someone being killed are, as well as very tragic, very expensive - the more information will be gathered.

So if Allianz is starting to take a dimmer view of people who drive and chat or (worse, I think) drive and text, it's time to take note.

In fact, I'm very much in favour of this for two reasons.

Firstly, in my experience driving and walking about, the crackdown on mobile phone use does not seem to be acting as much of a deterrent.

Cranking up the financial cost of getting caught may help.

Secondly, if other insurers follow suit, some of the extra money those caught will be paying may bring the premiums of the rest of us down slightly.

And no one ever complained about a cut in prices.

EDITOR'S CHOICE