I've just renewed my annual multi-trip travel insurance policy. It was a hassle. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone to sort it out.

And this was renewing with an existing insurer, who already had most of the details they needed on file. I hate to think how long it would have taken to switch to a different insurer for whom I'd have needed to start from scratch.

No doubt I could have got a better deal by shopping around. But any better deal I got would have to have been dramatically better to compensate me for the time it would have taken to find the deal. I figured it was unlikely that such deals are available, so I didn't bother to shop around.

The ridiculous length of questions insurance companies make us go through therefore seem to be acting as a barrier to competition.

Just a thought, but I wonder if this is deliberate? Isn't it in the insurance companies' interest to make it difficult for us to compare prices?