A few months ago, I started noticing something amusing on my social feeds: adverts for Lemonade. Not the drink (which always hits the spot after a long day), but the insurtech with the same name, promising transparent pricing, fast claims and a “Giveback” model where unused premiums go to causes customers choose.
It made me smile because in a way that is what mutual insurance was about at its origin: a shared pool, clear logic, straightforward trust. The basics, done properly, without too much theatre.
And here is the twist: Lemonade is not only a U.S. story anymore. It is present in Europe as well, quietly offering simple retail covers. That is not a revolution, but it is a signal. Transparency and simplicity are now part of the product promise, not just a nice extra.
It also made me reflect on something simple: insurance is universal, but trust is local.
And each market expresses trust in a different way.
In the UK, the conversation is price first
In the UK, personal insurance became almost synonymous with the cheapest premium that still meets the minimum requirement. Comparison sites trained customers to think in narrow transactional terms. That delivers efficiency, until the moment a claim arrives.
And here is the subtle point many are missing: insurance is not delivered at the moment; you pay the premium. It is delivered when you claim. The claim, the payment to cover a real loss, is the product. Everything else is packaging.
When the only conversation customers have had for years is about price, a predictable misunderstanding grows. People pay small amounts, expect broad cover, then find exclusions, friction and limits exactly when they need the insurer most. That is not a technical problem. It is a trust problem, rooted in how value was communicated long before the claim.
In France, choice reshaped trust
In France, the dynamic was different. For many years borrowers taking a mortgage effectively had to take the associated lender-linked death and disability cover for the loan to proceed. This was not contested because it was the norm. People accepted it because it was part of accessing credit.
The reforms that gradually opened substitution and competition changed that narrative. Customers began to ask not just what cover they had, but why they were paying what they were paying. It was a reminder that choice without explanation quickly becomes confusion without trust.
Switzerland: compulsory cover and rising costs
Switzerland’s basic health insurance system is compulsory for all residents, and that gives it a different starting point. The benefits and obligations are embedded in the social contract.
But the public conversation these past years keeps circling back to one theme: premiums keep going up. That is not controversial. Medical costs rise, demographics shift, utilisation increases. But if the explanation behind costs is not clear and felt to match what people get back from the system, trust becomes more fragile. Compulsory cover can survive price increases only if people see the connection between what they pay and what they are protected against.
Here Switzerland offers an interesting contrast. It is also a country where some insurers still shine precisely because they anchor themselves in proximity, community and continuity. Mobiliar comes to mind. Not because I am here to advertise for anyone, but because it illustrates a simple truth: trust is often built in the small, repeated moments, not in glossy slogans.
In Romandie, Vaudoise plays a similar role, in a smaller format, the petit poucet with a very Swiss sense of community. I hope I won’t offend my good friends at Vaudoise by saying it like that. In the end, this closeness is not a slogan. It is what makes the promise feel real when a claim arrives.
Germany and Austria: trust in tradition, clarity still required
Germany and Austria sit somewhere between these poles. Big markets, deep legacy, strong institutional names. That often feels like trust.
But tradition is not the same thing as clarity. In mature markets, customers do not lose trust because they dislike insurers. They lose trust because they cannot explain the product, the exclusions, the claims process or the premium logic in plain language. Information that sits in fine print or dense folders does not build confidence. It merely bumps into suspicion.
And the Netherlands? The woekerpolis affair
Then there is the Netherlands, which offers a potent illustration of how opacity erodes trust over the long term.
From the 1990s through the 2000s, millions of Dutch customers were sold investment-linked life insurance products known locally as woekerpolissen, “profiteering policies”, where large portions of premiums were absorbed by fees and costs, and eventual returns were far lower than expected.
Customers assumed these were long-term savings vehicles. What they discovered later was that the information about costs and investment mechanics had not been clear enough, and they felt misled. The issue triggered years of litigation and significant settlements.
This is not a distant memory. It is a lived lesson in how long-term financial promises can unravel when transparency fails.
A final thought, and a reminder from Australia
Australia is not Europe, but the trust mechanism is familiar.
Superannuation is the compulsory retirement savings system. For most people it is not a “product choice”, it is simply where their long-term savings accumulate over decades. It often comes with embedded insurance features, such as life and disability cover inside the pension structure, which makes the promise feel even more protective.
The problem is that long-term savings products are hard to judge in real time. You cannot “test” them like you test a phone contract. You only discover the real outcome years later.
Australia has had painful moments where people realised that complexity, layers of fees, distribution incentives, and weak governance could materially reduce the value they believed they were building for retirement. The shock was not just financial. It was psychological. People felt they had been paying into something that was supposed to be safe, only to learn that the system was not as transparent as they assumed.
What all this teaches us
Across the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and even Australia, the common thread is not regulation, product design or even price.
It is communication about claims, costs and value.
It is how clearly and consistently a promise is made and fulfilled.
Lemonade made people laugh because it said out loud what the industry sometimes forgets: transparency and simplicity are not trends. They are the fundamentals.
People pay today for protection tomorrow.
When they understand the promise, they accept the price.
When they do not, they measure insurance by the only thing they can compare quickly: the number on the bill and the size of the claim payout when it matters.
And in the end, trust is not built by slogans.
It is built by one thing only: how the promise feels when a claim hits the inbox.
Eric Lefebvre
Read also: Tuesday Column by Eric Lefebvre: Fast is Relative in Insurance
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