The super-rich, the notorious Johnson gang and the recession facing Britain were just some of the topics discussed by the head of Bermuda-based insurer Hiscox in an interview with London newspaper The Times.

Robert Hiscox, chairman of Hiscox, told the paper that the wealthiest members of society were not beyond fiddling their insurance policies when times get tough, but that his company had not yet seen signs of financial strain on its high net-worth customers.

"At the moment, there's still plenty of cash, (but) it's going to come. We're in a lull," he said.

"Financial pressure will bring a certain moral hazard. In a recession, you get more pressure to use insurance policies as a liquid asset. People stop being as careful with their possessions."

In the interview to mark Hiscox's record interim results, the 65-year-old Mr. Hiscox also criticised police for being slow to catch the Johnson family, a burglary gang jailed this month for a series of raids on stately homes. He accused officers of being uninterested because the gang's victims were wealthy and insured.

"We were very involved in trying to get the police to do something about it," he said, "but it took an unconscionably long time."

Hiscox reported a 14.6 percent rise in pre-tax profit to £16.3 million at its British and European business, which has its personal lines division.

The insurance company said that it would stop offering insurance to its mid-market customers - those with about £75,000 in home contents - through brokers and would offer the cover online.

He went on to predict that Britain was sliding into a recession far worse than that of the early 1990s.

"Normally a bit of a recession is good - it gets rid of the froth and brings sanity into values and God knows we need that," he said, "but this is going to be deeper than our previous experience."

During the interview, Mr Hiscox, who joined his father's Lloyds of London insurance syndicate in 1965, spoke out about the lack of experience in bank boardrooms as well, particularly in the US, which he said had contributed to their huge losses in the credit crisis.

"The banks don't have a single director who has been around for more than 15 years because corporate governance rules say that you're useless after 10 years," he said. "How are they expected to have any corporate memory?"

"We've been told for years: 'Why don't you do risk analysis like the banks do?' But when it came down to it, they didn't even know what they had on their books. We always want to know what we've got."