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Stanbic Insurance Company
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Stanbic Insurance Company This one promises to be interesting. I had top-up insurance cover with Alexander-Forbes. This second company's cover is cheaper, has less excess payable, and covers events that the first company just never covers. There is lots of detailed info and faxes. Basically what happened was I owned a property in Gauteng province. I had the property insured with the bank group through which I obtained my bond thinking that they would have their own interests at heart. No not so!!! I sold the property and the new owner moved in a paid occupational rent pending transfer. Well it did not work out and after quite a few problems the "renter" just disappeared leaving quite a bit of damage including damage to the swimming pool, front door, kitchen door, remote control, etc totaling about R1700 ($285). Well Stanbic sent out an assessor who listened to my whole story and looked at the damage, including a round hole made in the swimming pool which looked like it was caused my the renter's children. A while later the assessor's report informed me that the swimming pool was caused by cracks from wear and tear, and most of the other damage was eliminated for one reason or another and the amount remaining was not paid out because of the first amount payable by me. I did some checking and it turned out that they firstly had only received opinions verbally over the telephone from local swimming pool companies and secondly they were refusing to pay out claims that my other insurance company would pay out. I contacted one of these swimming pool companies and described the hole in the swimming pool (not a crack as Stanbic had suggested). This company informed me that it was quite possible that children had caused the damage with a pole or other sharp object. My top-up cover insurance company however did pay the claim out in full with the minimum of fuss and bother. This really set me thinking about the principles and morals involved. I appealed to the Insurance Ombudsman and sent photographs of all the damage and copies of all the correspondence and reports to him. On 1999-08-25 the Insurance Ombudsman contacted me and told me that they had ruled in my favour and that Stanbic would soon be paying me out. Well Stanbic did pay me and I promptly forwarded the money to Alexander-Forbes who had paid me out earlier. Stanbic did write a letter to the Ombudsman attempting to justify my claims such as that their rates are no higher than anyone else's, even providing statistics. My answer to this is: "It is one thing to convince others through statistics, but be careful of believing them yourself". The fact is that I was not paying the stated amounts in the statistics - I was paying much less and getting better cover elsewhere. So like I said, don't sit back and believe the market statistics you read - clients don't pay statistic prices!! I was left with the distinct impression that Stanbic was merely trying to get out of paying legitimate claims. My quest was not to get money for myself at all, as the money was anyway to be paid over to Alexander-Forbes, but to prove that the claim was legitimate. Well the fact that Alexander-Forbes paid the claim out and the fact that the Ombudsman ruled against Stanbic I think proved the point. None of these opinions in any way reflect those of my employer. These pages are entirely private. |