We are having to drag your insurers to the cash register and this is delaying your payments.
Tactics employed by your insurers are as follows:
- Deliberately trying to lower the Turnover Trend by incorporating March 2021 turnover in the trend calculation despite the fact that March was negatively affected by early Covid 19 business reduction. This has a substantial negative impact on the value of your claim and cannot be justified in any manner whatsoever;
- Refusing to reimburse your employees for any pay cuts, because you did not have funds to pay them during lockdown. Had the insurers accepted liability for these claims at the outset, these pay cuts would not have been necessary. This arrogance is deliberately punishing the most vulnerable sector of our economy and making them pay for your insurers bad decisions;
- Most of you negotiated provisional or permanent rental rebates from your landlords and your insurers are deducting these rebates from your claim and at the same time are refusing to reimburse your landlords in their claims. In other words your insurer is getting the benefit of the rebate under your claim and at the same time denying the landlord their claims for the rebated rental;
- Your policy covers any reduction of your rate of Gross Profit when you returned to partial business, but insurers are trying to ignore this portion of your claim. Many of you will have returned to partial business during the insured indemnity period, but for various reasons will be suffering a reduction in the gross profit earned on your reduced turnover;
- Old Mutual Insure continues to be the lone insurer to argue for the exclusion of foreign guest income despite all the legal precedents, and at the same time are refusing to provide any response to the claims, which we have submitted. Presently they are the most difficult insurer to deal with and are being deliberately obstructive in the assessment of your claims.
These are major issues we are having to deal with, but each claim is being argued at granular level. We were the only company that was not intimidated by the insurers when they denied the Covid-19 claims and you can be assured that we will not be intimidated by their current reluctance to deal with your claims fairly and efficiently.
Unfortunately these issues are creating frustrating delays in the processing of final or interim payments on your claims. This is being exacerbated by the fact that insurers only began instructing their loss adjusters to validate your claims in February 2021, which means that they are currently inundated with claims.
We are currently working with the more proactive insurers and their loss adjusters to unlock a faster process and expedite interim payments.
Santam has been very proactive in this regard and we expect that they will be releasing substantial interim payments very shortly.
Hollard South Africa is similarly being extremely proactive and these payments are being professionally managed and expedited.
By far the worst insurers to deal with are Factory & Industrial and Old Mutual Insure, which are yet to make any payments despite claims having been submitted over 2 months ago! These companies are being deliberately obstructive and we are in the process of reporting them respectively to the Lloyds Complaints Committee in London and the FSCA.
One of the major problems we are experiencing from the client side of this process is that some of you are sending your claims information directly to the insurers/loss adjusters instead of to our offices. The consequence is that your information is being interpreted to its lowest value and this means that we are having to waste a substantial amount of time rectifying the initial adjustments. Please make sure that you send all information directly to our offices and not to the insurers/loss adjusters.
From South Africa to Namibia
While there are positive signs in South Africa, Hollard Namibia has taken a very different stance, aggressively rejecting all Covid-19 related Business Interruption claims despite all the international legal precedents. The disastrous consequences for the Namibian tourism industry speaks for itself.
Hollard Namibia is a wholly-owned Namibian company and is not obliged to follow the proactive approach of Hollard International which manages all the other African insurers under its banner.
Hollard Namibia has taken great pains to try and demonise our company for daring to point out to the Namibian and international press the damage they are doing to their own tourism industry despite all the international legal precedents. The executive management of Hollard Namibia have adopted a personal aggressive response to the Covid-19 claims and we expect political intervention will probably become inevitable.
In a recent ICA media webinar, the disastrous impact of Hollard Namibia’s rogue actions were highlighted when ICA was joined by Na’ankuse, an eco-tourism NGO that provides critical upliftment support to the vulnerable San community, and the Gondwana Collection which is the largest private sector tourism company in Namibia. These entities highlighted the disastrous economic impact that Hollard Namibia’s actions are having on the tourism industry in general, but more importantly, on individual employees who are totally reliant on this industry.
This matter is currently heading to court in Namibia and you can be sure that Hollard Namibia will be receiving a lot more publicity about their actions and their lack of concern for their countries tourism industry and its employees, despite all the international legal precedents.
A recording is available here.
Media engagement
Most recently, the Hollard Namibia case has been making headlines, but there have been well over 1 100 articles and interviews published across print, radio and TV channels. This publicity is critically important to highlight the plight of the people affected by insurers improper behaviour. Here are some of the headlines from the past few weeks:
- Hollard dragged into Namibian COVID-19 Claims Debacle
- Hollard Namibia defying international precedent
- Hollard weier om te betaal
I would like to thank all of you that have contributed by sharing your stories and experiences with journalists.
One thing which we have noticed is the massive level of underinsurance for Business Interruption which has had extremely negative consequences on your insurance payouts. Whilst this is a complex calculation we would like to draw your attention to LMI BI Calculator which you can use to accurately calculate your business interruption cover. This is a free service and should be used with every business interruption policy.
We also welcome any questions you may have which we would be happy to address in upcoming newsletters for the benefit of all claimants.
Lastly, my door is always open. Please reach out to me directly if you have anything you wish to raise or ask: ryan.woolley@insuranceclaimsafrica.com
As we go into Year 2, you have our assurance that we will continue to fight on your behalf and update you with any progress.
Kind regards,
Ryan Woolley
Insurance Claims Africa – CEO
