In the first of five papers, John Birds of Sheffield University reviews the chief self-regulatory devices affecting personal insurance contracts, in particular the Statements of Practice affecting insurers and intermediaries and finally arbitration, notably, before the Insurance Ombudsman. It is right to give prominence to these matters and it is also right, as the author points out, to recall how little is known about how they really work inside the citadel of the industry. From a prominence outside, Birds is well placed to pick off weaknesses in the wording of the Statements—and he does this with accuracy—but one is left with the sense of a skirmish in a battle that has barely begun, not least because new statements, such as those under construction for brokers at Lloyd’s, are being drafted into the field. This is a perceptive tour of the walls of Jericho, but inevitably the walls still stand and, with Mr Birds, we should like to go through.

In the second paper, “Insurance Intermediaries and the Financial Services Act”, by Joanna Gray of University College London, we are taken around the new acronyms, SIB, FIMBRA, LAUTRO, SRO, etc. In particular, she asks whether the proposals “effectively correct the information asymmetry between intermediary and investor which is currently dis