The Invisible Bankers

Invisible Bankers: Everything the Insurance Industry Never Wanted You to Know is a 1982 book on the insurance industry. It was written by financial journalist Andrew Tobias who became famous for his earlier book The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. It covers the financial details of life, auto, health and fire insurance -- the types consumers normally buy. Because insurers are always the subject of fraudsters who say torch their own unprofitable businesses to collect on the insurance, who say murder the insured to collect on the death benefit, who falsify their own deaths, insurance companies need to be on their guard. In addition, an unscrupulous insurer could in theory make more profits if it could either induce their insureds into settling for less than they are entitled to or from outright wrongly denying valid clams in hopes that a small yet significant percentage would either get discouraged or wrongly believe that their claims were wrong. This makes dealings with insurers difficult. This book was the first guide to ordinary consumers into both the math and the business side of insurance.

The title refers to the fact that the insurance industry controls nearly as much money as the banking industry, yet remains essentially unregulated by the Fed, and is only weakly regulated by the states. They can essentially do what they please with your money, and have found increasingly creative ways of lining their own pockets with it. This is why health care costs have gone skyward in the U.S., and why nationalized medicine doesn't have a chance without insurance industry reform - they're simply making too much money to give it up without a huge fight. Unfortunately the essential message of his book has gone largely ignored for 25 years.

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