Sasria sets 10-day deadline for unrest claims
The South African Special Risk Insurance Association (Sasria) has set a 10-day deadline for the submission of claims related to the unrest in July last year. The 10-day term, effective from June 13, […]
claims
High Court judgment ‘is a caution to insureds who seek to obstruct an insurer’s access to information’
In what is a rare win for an insurer in recent times, the Gauteng High Court’s judgment in Musa v King Price Insurance Co on 9 May highlights the importance of insureds abiding […]
Discovery Life’s individual life cover pay-outs jump 173% in 2021
Discovery Life paid claims to the value of R11.79 billion last year, of which R9.1bn was for more than 10 000 individual life claims – an 89% increase in the value of individual […]
KZN floods are the biggest natural catastrophe in Santam’s history
Santam’s current “best estimate” of its gross exposure to the KwaZulu-Natal floods in April is R3.2 billion. However, reinsurance cover will limit the net impact to about R500 million, it said in a […]
Covid waves see Liberty’s claim pay-outs jump 60%
Claims paid out by Liberty under its flagship Lifestyle Protector policy shot up by 59.6% last year, to R10.12 billion, largely because of the cumulative effects of the Beta and Delta waves of […]
Old Mutual receives more than 2 200 flood claims
Old Mutual Insure (OMI) has received more than 2 200 claims related to the floods in KwaZulu-Natal in April. In a trading update published on 26 May, Old Mutual said reinsurance agreements would reduce […]
Complaints data for short-term insurers
This link will open the complaints data from the Ombudsman for Short-term Insurance’s 2021 annual report. The insurers are sorted by number of complaints per thousand claims (column 5). As the Osti points […]
Osti flags increase in disputes due to ‘reasonable precaution’ clause
The Ombudsman for Short-term Insurance (Osti) has once again flagged the increase in the number of complaints from consumers whose claims are rejected because insurers allege the driver failed to exercise reasonable precaution […]
R8bn in retained earnings wiped out in days
The 10 days of unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng in July last year wiped out the South African Special Risk Insurance Association’s cumulative retained earnings of more than R8 billion, incoming […]
Insurance update on KZN floods
The South African Insurance Association (SAIA) says the damage to infrastructure in KwaZulu-Natal as a result of the floods already exceeds R1.1 billion, which was the estimated cost of damage after the flash […]
Old Mutual joins move to limit cover for non-physical damage on BI policies
Old Mutual Insure has followed South Africa’s largest short-term insurer, Santam, in excluding certain types of non-physical damage from its business interruption cover, because it can no longer reinsure these events. Read: Santam […]
Only 19% of South Africans are insured when funeral cover is excluded
Some 60% of South Africans report having an insurance product, and insurance penetration, measured using premiums as a percentage of GDP, was 13.7% in 2020 – one of the highest in the world, […]
The onus of proving driving under the influence of alcohol
I commented last week on the difficulty experienced by insurers to obtain irrefutable proof where there are suspicions that someone involved in an accident may have been driving under the influence of alcohol […]
Life insurers ‘well capitalised’ despite paying out R608 billion in 2021
Policyholders and beneficiaries received claims and benefit payments worth R608 billion from South African life insurers in 2021, the highest paid in a single year, according to statistics released by the Association for […]
Key trends in the short-term insurance industry
The South African insurance industry is a vital socio-economic sector that provides a critical safety net to society. This was crystalised in 2021 as we continued to grapple with the fallout from the […]
Will loyalty programme devices be used to refute claims?
My colleague Mark Bechard’s article on the increase in rejected claims because of reckless driving raises a few interesting questions about the possible use of technology when investigating such claims. The Ombudsman for Short-term […]
R3.2bn of Santam’s record R24.5bn claims pay-out went to BI policyholders
Santam paid out R24.5 billion (2020: R21bn) in claims last year, the highest gross claims pay-out in its 104-year history, the country’s biggest short-term insurer said in its financial results for the year […]
