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Home Insurance -
How Many Lies Have You Told Your Insurer? |
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Filling in application forms is no doubt very tasking, but it’s, nonetheless, essential to get it right. One must, as a matter fact, get a range of information, from one’s full names, date of birth, gender, home address and contact numbers up to the unique password by which one will be identified amongst millions of others right.
But have you ever pondered the fact that you could get one simple thing wrong and throw everything into jeopardy? Take the case of an application for a bank account, for example, and imagine you misspelling your surname, and filling in your own application on behalf of someone else or applying for a loan and not getting your details right. Consider giving your new employer or someone very important your bank details, expecting some money to paid in and missing a number or substituting your account number with another person’s and they get paid instead. Imagine how devastating this could be even if in the end you get your money back, after the other guy is traced. Would you blame anyone, whom you generously although erroneously pay money into their account, if they make a feast of it?
Against the above backdrop let’s look at the recent warning by Sainsbury’s Finance that over 1.12 million people in the UK have knowingly given false information when applying for insurance policies. Shocking as this revelation is, a breakdown shows that the highest number of those are homeowners, who by supplying inaccurate information for their content or home insurance cover could render the policy invalid. They constitute 18 per cent and this is very worrying because of the current weather crisis that’s predicted to inflict so much damage to buildings that the industry will be forced to cough out a lot of money as pay outs. It also comes at a time that many homeowner are expected to, in the attempt to make improvements, cause a lot of damage that could result in claims worth up to £25 million after the Easter bank holiday.
Coming second only to home insurance in the list of dishonesty is car insurance. With 15 per cent it clearly suggests just how serious car owners are with their insurance even in the face of increasing road accidents, thefts and break-ins.
Travel insurance, which has dominated news headlines in the run up to Easter, stands at 12 per cent and takes the third place. One is not too surprised given the number of people travelling on holiday without taking out any valid travel insurance.
And finally is pet insurance in the fourth position with just four per cent. This is in spite of the love many confess to have for pets, amidst increasing animal right campaigns.
In the research one age group noted for falling foul of this is the over 65s, of whom one-third said they knowingly gave false information or made a best guess. In contrast those between 16 and 24 years were found to be the most honest.
The reasons given for this failure - people run short of time to get the correct information while processing applications, the process to obtain the right details takes long and the yearn for cheaper premiums - sound irresponsible, methinks. Should things suddenly fail to happen the way we plan, it could take much longer to get them back to normal. If we don’t give the right details, believing that there’s no time to double-check, what then happens if the wrong guy gets what is by right ours or we are told we can’t have it? Should we blame the other person, the insurer or ourselves? And suppose we, in attempting to let price determine our choice, end up with the wrong cover, how do we wriggle out?
These and many more questions are what we need to ask ourselves as we take out new insurance policies or renew existing ones. If answered as sincerely as possible, we may know exactly how to sort out these contradictions without much ado.
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