Wage-Earners' Life Insurance The report of the Industrial Assurance Commissioner,
which was published last Friday, contains passages which form an instructive comment on some recent corre- spondence in The Spectator. The report deals with the year 1932, and in its first paragraph states that in that year, while the premium-income collected by the industrial assurance companies and societies amounted to £57,300,000, no less a sum than £19,100,000, or precisely a third, was absorbed in management expenses. The third paragraph mentions with studied objectivity the fact that as a result of " the steps taken by the offices to remedy their omission in the past to give effect to the provisions of Section 25 of the Industrial Assurance Act, 1923 " 2,101,000 free policies, assuring £3,206,000, have been issued, and 103,000 surrender values, amount- ing to £67,000, have been paid. A default whose rectifica- tion (at the instigation of the Commissioner) means some £81 to its beneficiaries is not a trifling matter. The Commissioner's report provides imperative reasons why the Government should act at once on the recommenda- tions of the recent Departmental Committee on Industrial Assurance. The question cannot be allowed to drop.
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