Block insurance scandal will need regulated help

The consultation phase of an RICS inquiry into the scandalous levels of commission added by landlords and/or their managing agents to residential block insurance premiums completes this week.

In late autumn the organisation will (hopefully) call for transparency on a practice that can routinely add 40%-100% to the cost of insuring a block.

Not that guilty landlords and agents will take a blind bit of notice.

The only thing that will make a difference is the threat of excommunication by the Financial Services Authority of any regulated insurer or broker who does not insist that the basic premium and all additional commissions are shown on the service charge statements given to occupiers.

There is far too much easy money involved for all concerned for anything less than regulation to work.

It took the natty Roger Southam of managing agents Chainbow two years of pestering to get the RICS to even examine a subject that provides some of its members with very easy money: members who are already examining ways of circumventing the report before it is even published.