Harry Potter and the Amazing Insurance Industry

In an early scene in the new film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a wizard raises his wand and magically (of course) pieces together a shattered chandelier in the home of retired Hogwarts professor Horace Slughorn. (The chandelier was purposely broken by the house’s tenant in an effort to fool the “Death Eaters” into thinking he’d been killed.)

It’s early in the film and not the most remarkable scene in the movie. It serves to give the characters on their journey into darkness (and death, by the way … not to spoil things too much) a bit of comic relief; and it shows how powerful magic can be. Through special effects or running the film in reverse (our resident film production expert, Mark Bentley, could tell us for sure), the chandelier on the floor of Horace Slughorn’s house goes from broken to fixed. Just like that, with the wave of a wand and an incantation or two.

What’s remarkable about the movie scene, to me, is that it illustrates exactly what the insurance industry does, 24/7/365.

Well, not exactly–but fairly close. In the film (which I recommend, but with the warning that it’s a bit slow, and dark, and more plodding than others in the Harry Potter series) the magical reassembly of the broken chandelier takes mere seconds. It’s never that easy, or fast, or clean, or painless for mere mortals in the insurance business. But rebuilding is exactly what the insurance industry does best. Insurance is supposed to “make whole” a person or entity that has suffered a loss. The indispensable insurance industry provides the funds, the expertise, the resources, and the wherewithal to put back together what has been broken.

If the insurance industry can’t rebuild something, it can’t be done. The magic only happens in films. The real stuff takes insurance.

– Charles Wasilewski