Guy Browning takes a sideways look at insurance jargon
F is for...
Facility - Toilet for brokers
Factor - A small farm with only one tractor
Facultative obligatory treaty - Agreement by which children get pocket money only when they've done their homework.
Failure of consideration - Male brokers' habit of leaving the seat up in the facility, to the annoyance of female brokers
Fidelity guarantee - Chastity belt
Field staff - Peasant labourers
Final pensionable salary - What your pension's likely to be the day after being rude to your boss
Fire - What your boss does to you if you step out of line
Fire insurance - Having compromising photographs of your boss and his PA
First loss - Slight recession of hair just above the temples. Often found in men shortly before first sports car
First party insurance - Insurance teenagers wish they'd had after destroying their parents' house with first party
Fixed sum excess - Creative accounting to make the figures add up
Fixtures - Badly fitting hair pieces
Flat line reinsurance - Lies your personal trainer tells you before you pay him for ten sessions
Flexible endowment assurance - Boxer shorts
Floater policy - A café that serves coffee with a layer of cream on the top
Flood insurance - Box of tissues made ready before Julia Roberts film
Follow the lead - Underwriter's version of swinging the lead
Force majeure - Leader of a troop of majorettes
Forcible and violent means - Standard appraisal in insurance
Forfeiture - The physical law that explains why when there are four feet in a bed, only half of them are ever warm
Fortuitous event - Anything unpleasant that happens to the boss
Forum - Enough for a meeting, but not quite a quorum
Forward contract - Action by middle-aged men to suck in the stomach when young attractive women walk by
Foundations clause - Refusal of heavily made-up women to go out in the rain
Franking - Telling someone what you really think of them
