moneyblog

Price-based competition

Wouldn't a website like this one be nice? For all those value seekers out there on the web. Maybe Ed Saul can gradually expand his offering. 

Handling Medical Information Requests

Here in NZ where medical requests are made to private practice GPs, and usually compiled by staff there have been enough grumblings about the cost - which has often made answering insurance requests for information a low priority amongst medical staff. In the UK part of the solution is to pay off-duty nurses to handle the requests. Link.

Digital Copyright

A very good piece on the new digital copyright bill. Not often I find a lot to agree with Nandor Tanczos on... Link.

Voting Records Correlation with Income

This is a short article, about voting correlation with income, which raises more questions than it answers perhaps. The simplistic association of income levels with wealth for example. There are more. However, it's interesting. Have fun. If you're feeling brave, comment, which you can even do anonymously, so you don't get yourself or your company into too much trouble with free-ranging debate. Link.

The Best Little EftPos System in the World

A nice article over at the NBR on EFTPOS and how it became so popular. A good piece of shared in frastructure. Link.

Fraud

"You're a thief, a trickster, a charlie, a liar, and an all-around bunco artist! Admit it"..."Why did it take so long for you to find the financial industry?" - Mrs Lavish from "Making Money"

Sadly, the business continues to attract them. This scheme - an almost pathetically bad attempt to defraud the Bank of England of $75 Billion - attests to it. Link.

Why I Write...

Tyler Cowan, economist, of Marginal Revolution - a darned good site, and one I should link to more often - asked Ed Glaeser of the New York Sun why he writes... when he should be blogging. I'm not a regular NY Sun reader, but the article caught my eye because it discusses the essential differences between blogging (informality, speed, connectedness) and print media (formality, broadcast-style) and so on - and does so quite well. Of course, both writers do, essentially, what would be called opinion pieces (although very fact intensive as befits their disciplines) rather than 'straight' journalism.

Like them I write in print and blog - and while I do find the process quite different - I get pretty much the rewards as described from both these activities. Plus two others: (a) pleasure, because as a marketer writing is not just something I do, but something I love to do, and (b) publicity - after all, it is a trade show ;-)

Background to the L.J.Hooker Insurance facility

Goodreturns has the background here.

Find a friend a loan - But is it "wrong"?

Check it out - and comment with a one sentence reason why you think this is either Okay, Wrong, or something in between. Link.

Improving WikiPedia

Here is the link to "Life Insurance" over at Wikipedia. The article is headed with a warning "This may require clean-up to meet Wikipedias quality standards". Indeed it does have a number of problems. One is that it's a little too UK-centric. It's too technical, and should perhaps be broken up with links to other articles dealing with aspects such as pricing and underwriting. There is little about the utility of life insurance, which would benefit the casual reader. There is nothing on history, which would be beneficial both to the casual reader as well as industry people. But it could be a useful resource.

Would anyone like to collaborate on an upgrade? Drop me a line.