Topic: Ask for insurance! (Read 297 times)

Vod's take on the issue is asking for personal insurance documents of the people involved in the business - typically that is something that's considered 'private info'.

If it were business insurance or auto insurance - then it'd be a different story because the information there is accessible to regulatory bodies and therefore to the public.

Yes - ask for insurance - but all I am saying is - don't be alarmed if the person you're asking isn't too enthusiastic about sharing that info - considering how that can be seen as a breach of privacy.

This can certainly be one yardstick for measurement - but not the only move at an investor's disposal.

Admit I didn't grasp the answer at first, so it probably doesn't have a global answer. I'd expect it's protected by corporate interests in the US, but perhaps in places like India, more lenient to the public by the Right to Information Act?

In any case, if more of us were like Vod in demanding to see proof of insurance before joining a business, they'd be less scams happening. Reminding myself I'm invested in a few businesses I don't have full (or any) guarantees in... I wonder if proof of insurance could still retain privacy.

I've already covered this question in part - read above.

As for if its standard practice or not - in a capitalistic world "rules" are set by corporate lawyers - which in turn is kinda fluid and subjected to negotiation skills of individual lawyers.

For professionals in the US there are varying degrees of compulsory professional liability insurance that some states in the US have put in place. Beyond that, the only other instance of compulsory insurance would be the workers’ compensation insurance which many states within the US and countries outside of its mandate as compulsory.
However, that kind of insurance is mostly directed towards large factories or companies where the risk of physically getting hurt or the risk of dying are high for the employees. Think coalmines and construction companies.

Besides, there are other kinds of insurances that a business can take, like product liability insurance (special cases only), insurances for the real estate on which the business is based upon.

Although not fully fleshed out, the affordable (obama) care act was also semi-compulsory in nature.

Don't know how I missed this thread, nice.

Vod, do you know if it's normal practice anywhere in the world to be able to ask for business insurance details and be shown it? Wouldnt that reveal a lot of private information the policyholder probably shouldn't give away? Or is that sort of privacy what a big business has to give up to qualify for insurance?

Honest question, as I've actually lived most of my life uninsured except when covered by group policy from work (and now freelancing, so only mandatory health insurance for the past 2 years). I actually don't really know how all these things work.

Curious also to know if any of the hacked Japanese exchanges have ever settled claims (part of licence requirement was insurance). And now that I'm thinking about it, insurance doesn't seem to be a requirement for obtaining an exchange licence from Estonia (passporting to EU).

There's a thing called paid off quotation or surrender quotation that anyone can take out with the folio number - not even the name is required.

With the quotation received you can either surrender the policy or choose to claim tax refunds. That quotation has other information like address, telephone number key id details etc.

Now criminals target policy holders that live rented, have missed few months of payments or are no longer reachable - either by being out of station or by being stupid and not answering their phones.

At that point, the fraudsters would submit for a manual claim, where a bearer cheque is mailed through the national post office to the registered address.
At this point they either stake out the address or they goad the mailman to hand them over the mail.

Now I am not entirely sure how they manage to clear the cheque from whichever bank they do it from, but they do it nonetheless.

This is entirely a common thing in LIC - The Life Insurance Corporation of India. LIC fraud was pretty rampant when I was growing up - the 90's.

With private companies the process is a bit more sophisticated - information I am not privy to. I was studying with a private company in - big name - we were taught in training to advice our customers not to share their folio number over calls or with any unauthorized person.

Some lead me on or tried to distract, but no one ever provided any indication they had any.   

The scammers can't consider it, and the honest ones are probably getting quotes and will soon decide if it's worth it.


All you have is the insurer name and policy number.   What can you do with that against a modern, vetted insurance company?

Good idea Vod. This also applies to job seekers. If you're looking for work with say a casino, it is especially important to ask for insurance papers. I was offered a project in which I had to build gambling software. I asked about registering the business, and my partner wanted to just host the site on an offshore server. He abandoned the project, leaving me with the code. If I ever decide to host it, I shoul.d partner with someone who is more legit.

There are active projects in development that are not only linking the cryptosphere to the insurance sector but actually making it a vital part of the ecosystem.

This is why we need new authority, a regulatory body of sorts that should at the least necessitate any and all blockchain or crypto company to insure all its employees at the least. The ground reality is, many good companies actually start out as garage bands - like mircosoft, apple, dell, google & so many more - these companies with their shoestring budgets would be financially incapable of insuring its members.

However, if every new ico / sto was mandated to use a part of their pre-ico / private-funding to insure its assets, employees then I think all of us would be in a better place.

But in the long run - even this is just a 'temporary solution' to a larger problem. This is equivalent to shifting a part of the verification process that every individual investor must do on its own to a large conglomerate.

A long time ago I did study to become an insurance agent - although I never took that path seriously. I know of cases where unauthorized third parties successfully raised claims or faked death (take the QuadrigaCX for example) etc - all without the knowledge of the insured party.

So this process of asking for insurance details can easily backfire if the one asking for this information is himself crooked.

A lot of things are still missing in the crypto sphere.

Your suggestion is no doubt will change how the ICOs takes place and prevent scams.
I believe currently below 1% ICOs would have insurance or maybe ZERO . How many positive responses did you get when you asked for insurance?

But to monitor if the ICOs have insurance or not and it is a legitimate business or not, there should be a global ICO regulator.
It is because the investors are too much lazy to perform an inquiry before investing, otherwise there wouldn't be any scam accusations.

The way crypto is moving forward, it is going to be 100% centralized one day. However, IMO ICOs should fall in a centralized system, not the investors.

In theory you are right, but in practice it is very difficult for an insurance institution to cover such high risks.

In practice it could happen, and I'm sure it would be so, that the presence of an insurance would trigger a pump on the token that would bring the value to very high levels: the consequence of this would be a cost to be incurred to ensure the product, almost equal to of the product itself.
To give an example that makes an idea, it's like securing a 99-year-old man against death: no one wants to insure him, or whoever insures him demands a premium higher than the insured value.

Assuring the true identity of an individual could be a solution, but in this case the best thing would be to involve appropriate institutions of the various national states creating something like a chamber of commerce for the digital, leaving the banking and insurance world out of this system.

Let the insurance company validate all that. If they get scammed and have to pay out, they will change.
 
Proof of insurance is also proof of business registration.  Plus,proof of insurance is something that is normally given out with no privacy concerns.

Bare minimum policy should be business continuity for the total amount raised, which includes life insurance should someone die holding the private key.

Just a heads up on this point. I recently stumbled across a Ponzi scam under the name of "BTC Upgrade" being advertised on this forum, which was using another company's details as fake credentials. The other company was completely legitimate, had nothing to do with cryptocurrency, but unfortunately had chosen the name "BTC Assets" (registered 3 years before the bitcoin genesis block). You can see my original post on it here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/using-someone-elses-legitimate-company-as-a-front-for-a-scam-5114272

It is more than possible that an ICO will find a similar named company (or even name themselves after an already existing company) as a way to appear to be registered/licensed.

A legitimate business also need to be registered somewhere also, you cannot be anonymous and run a legitimate business firm, Ask the company (ICO) where they are registered and their license details in that country.

Thanks for that bump, good idea

Bump for newbies!

A must have thing for a company and as an investor a must thing should be consider first before putting up money.If this would be followed in all sorts then
scam company wont most likely to exist but sad to see on whats happening currently on our surroundings now.

This has been working wonderful for me with all the spam email I get.  When asked for insurance details, I never hear from scammers again.

Any legitimate business should have business continuity insurance, in case something bad happens. 

You probably cannot insure an crypto currency against theft, because there is no way to prove the loss was not internal and premeditated.

But you CAN insure the lives of the principal operators of the ICO/Project.  At least for the full amount they are raising.

Believe me - the insurance company will validate these people exist and they are who they say they are.  You cannot take out insurance on a fake person.

If a person refuses to give you the insurance information from a reputable company that you can call and verify, don't invest a satoshi.