Dear Insurance People.

I’ve been engaged in a battle to renew my business insurance lately. It’s gone on for an unbelievably long time, because I can’t find anyone to insure us properly.

When asked about the reasons why companies are — I’m going to say ‘scared’ — to insure my business, it seems to boil down to two things.

1) The majority of my work over the last ten years or so is for North American clients. This seems to terrify them.

2) The insurers seem hell bent on protecting the mythically vulnerable from me — rather than the other way round, in a system that protects other people from being copied by me.

As most illustrators will know, we are most at risk from being ripped off by a third party — including large companies and startlingly high-profile corporations who ought to know better (we all know who I’m talking about, insert your own anecdote here) than we are at risk of plotting to rip them off, or each other.

These things are new. Or maybe they only seem new; when I reflect on it, there’s been a growing sense of anxiety in the voices of those I speak to every time I ring up for annual insurance. It explains why I’ve moved companies so often. It contextualises why I’m constantly getting new quotes, from fewer and fewer companies. And it reveals an increasingly protect-the-big-guys modus operandi; if a missed…