ABSA Life ****med me of premiums worth approximately R2 million for 3 years and refused to pay my claim and canceled my policies

My name is Kekeletso Mabule. I reside in Bloemfontein and I am the CEO of The Will Funeral Service and Memorials. I am humbly requesting your assistance and below are the detailed outlined challenges that I am requesting to be assisted with.

1. 1. Non-Payment of Policy Life Cover ***, My late uncle Oupa Joel Mabule. passed away on 06/01/2023.

2. 2. Cancelled policies of family members for premiums to the value of almost two million rands.

Background:

My late father had a responsibility for the care and support of the family and clan members for burial of the deceased. He was a funeral undertaker and thus the family re**** on him to assist whenever there was a family bereavement. He always carried that responsibility out of his business venture and he used his resources to support the family burials. I then took over and became the custodian of this responsibility and acquired funeral and life policies for the members of the family which were with other financial institutions and not ABSA.

In 2019, I opened a business account with ABSA.

ABSA changed my personal account to private banking and then introduced me to their Financial Advisor by the name of Barry Conjie who convinced me to discontinue to use the Standard Bank Financial Advisor. I was also requested to convince my employees to change their accounts from Standard Bank to ABSA. There was a delegate of three ABSA representatives who came into my office to process the opening of ABSA bank accounts, Funeral/Life policies and wills for my employees. They also established a trust, Life Cover, will and funeral policies for me.

The ABSA Financial Advisor indicated that he had noticed from a certain banking system and confirmed from my banking statements that I had funeral and life covers from their competitors and that I should consider moving them to ABSA as he would give me better offers in terms of premiums and covers. I consented to the migration proposal from the other financial companies and moved all my policies to ABSA.

I opened up to the ABSA delegation and introduced them to my family, relatives and friends, who also migrated to ABSA products. In 2020, during the Covid19 lockdown, the Financial Advisor informed me that ABSA had opened up an opportunity for recruitment of life policies for people up to 55 years, which would not need to take up medical examination provided that they were in good health. With the back ground of my social responsibility for burials of my family and relatives, I made life cover applications for those who were in relatively good health as indicated.

DISPUTES:

Dispute 1. Non-Payment of Policy Life Cover ***, My late uncle Oupa Joel Mabule. passed away on 06/01/2023.

I submitted a claim on this policy on the 12 January 2023 and it has not been paid. I had been informed by the ABSA Financial Officer, when I app**** for the policies, that I would get R50 000,00 to assist with the burial preparations but I did not receive that amount. I was also informed that the policy payment would be made in 30 days.

Oupa Joel Mabule died at Baragwanath Hospital on 06 January 2023 and on the 9th January when we went to fetch his corpse, we were informed that he would only be released after a post-mortem as he had passed on after surgery. The corpse was eventually released on the 12 January 2023 and I submitted the claim on the above-mentioned policy. The family members realized that the date of death on the death certificate was registered as the 02/01/2023 which was incorrect as he had passed away on the 6th January 2023. The family approached the Forensic Unit and Home Affairs to request the corrections on the date of death. This was ultimately corrected and the death certificate with the correct dates was submitted to ABSA with an affidavit from the Doctor who had made the mistake.

On the 6th February 2023, I called ABSA to enquire about the progress of the claim as I had not received any update up to then. After my enquiry, a Claims Assessor, Mpho Vumane, sent me a letter of acknowledgement of receipt of the claim. This letter indicated that I should obtain a medical history of the deceased from Baragwanath Hospital and that the claim will be processed only once the medical history has been submitted. The letter emphasized that if I delay, the claim process will also be delayed. I felt that the Assessor’s response was not fair as ABSA should engage the medical facility to obtain the medical history. I then lodged a complaint telephonically to the Head of Department by the name of Ron Banda. On the 9th February I received an SMS from ABSA Life which stated that the claim was selected for auditing which would take 23 days to finalize the claim. At the time of the auditing, the claim was sent to the ABSA investigating team headed by Kagiso Mogale because there was suspicion of ***** because of the error of the date of death that was made on the death certificate.

The investigator who was responsible for the claim was Bethuel Molokwane who communicated well with me on the progress of the claim. Once he was done with the investigation at Baragwanath Hospital, he interviewed me and requested telephone contacts of members of the family, one who stayed with, and another who did not stay with the deceased. I gave him the contact details of Palesa Mabule, the daughter of the deceased who stayed with him and Tsietsi Mabule who did not stay with him. I must indicate that at the stage my relationship with Palesa had soured during the time when we were busy with the funeral arrangements. We had some disagreements and our relationship was not good at this time of the investigation but I gave out her contact details as she is the one who stayed with the deceased.

Bethuel gave me an update by telephone and stated that he had completed the investigations with the two individuals whom I had referred him to. He mentioned that Tsietsi was cooperative but Palesa was not cooperative. He further indicated that he will be able to complete his report from the two people that he contacted despite struggling to get Palesa to cooperate. He further affirmed that he had submitted the report to Kagiso Mogale.

After my conversation with Bethuel, I called Kagiso Mogale to enquire about the progress of the payment of the claim. Kagiso Mogale was hostile to me and we had an argument which caused serious indifference between us. Ron Banda, on the other hand, informed me that the claim was ready to be paid and that Kagiso Mogale was purposely delaying the submission of the report. Ron further indicated that he had enquired from Kagiso on why he was playing delaying tactics in submitting the report, and this had caused an altercation between the two.

Up to date, the claim has not been paid and instead, Kagiso Mogale started to approach my family members. He approached Palesa Mabule, influenced her to sign an affidavit which he wrote, wherein he stated that my uncle did not get any explanation on this policy. He also wrote another affidavit wherein he stated that Palesa did not know anything about her policy. Kagiso then came to Bloemfontein and started to instigate some of my relatives against me with regard to the policies that I had taken for them. He mentioned to them that I am busy enriching myself through these policies and that it is ******* for one person to be a beneficiary of so many policies. He further asked them why it is not their children that are the beneficiaries of those policies. He intimidated them and claimed that he is investigating the *****ulent policies that I have made and also forced them to sign affidavits which he had written in which he stated that they should agree that they did not get an explanation of the type of the policy cover. Then he informed all these people that they should not inform me that he has had contact with them and have asked them to sign these affidavits.

I ultimately submitted a complaint to the ABSA Complaint Department with regard to the manner in which the claim was being handled (Complaint Reference ***). The complaint was handled by Ismail Surtee, who is an ombudsman liaison. The complaint was handed in on the 14th March 2023 and Ismail Surtee indicated that they will give me feedback within fourteen days. I have not received any feedback up to date. I eventually submitted a complaint to the ombudsman of long-term insurance because Ismail Surtee ignored my emails.

On 30 March 2023 Kagiso Mogale called me, requesting a meeting at the ABSA Bloemfontein Office on 31 March 2023. At the meeting Kagiso Mogale and two other people who identified themselves as Albert and Sipho said that they wanted to question me with regard to Oupa Mabule's claim and other life policies that I am the beneficiary of. At this meeting I informed the other two gentlemen present that I was unhappy with the manner in which Kagiso Mogale was handling the matter and that I felt that Kagiso Mogale had a personal vendetta against me. At that time, I did not know why this was so. Kagiso Mogale's colleagues requested him to excuse himself from the meeting but he refused to do so. The ABSA representatives requested permission to record the meeting to which I responded that I would cooperate but refused to have the meeting recorded. No permission was granted for the meeting to be recorded but notwithstanding this refusal the ABSA representatives went ahead and recorded the meeting. The ABSA representatives lead by Kagiso Mogale proceeded to interrogate me in an extremely intimidating manner refusing to listen to or acknowledge any explanations and/or possible evidence that I had to offer.

I accidentally noticed that Kagiso Mogale followed my Funeral Parlour's Facebook page. On clicking on his name, I found that Kagiso Mogale has a relationship with the Mabule family and also with Tsholo Mabule whose mother, Louisa owns a Funeral Parlour called Faith Funeral Home in Johannesburg. These are my family members with whom I have a strained relationship. I feel that this may be the reason for the animosity and personal vendetta that I feel I am experiencing from Kagiso Mogale and I also feel that this constitutes a conflict of interest on Kagiso Mogale's behalf. I reported this matter to ABSA Complaints Department addressing the compliant to Ismail Surtee. He has not responded to this complaint up to this date.

The only opportunity that I have had to possibly explain my side of the story was on 31 March 2023 in the presence of Kagiso Mogale and the two other ABSA representatives. At this meeting, I was questioned and intimidated and the ABSA representatives would not allow me to tell my side of the story or to offer any explanations whatsoever. The ABSA representatives also refused to accept any evidence that I wished to present to them. I had been told by various family members that Kagiso Mogale had visited them and presented himself as a Capitec employee and that he had informed them that I had been taking ******* policies on people's lives. Kagiso Mogale intimidated these family members with a vast number of questions leading them to answer and agree with him. He then completed affidavits and coerced the family members into signing them. When I wanted to submit the names and phone numbers of family members who would testify with regard to the signing of the policy on Oupa Mabule, in opposition to the affidavits obtained by Kagiso Mogale, they refused to accept this information and potential evidence.

Dispute 2: Cancelled policies of family members for premiums to the value of almost two million rands.

On Friday 26th May 2023, I and my family members received SMS’s stating that our policies which I have been paying for since 2019 have been cancelled. The SMSs stated that the policies have been cancelled as of the 30 April 2023 even though the premiums for May 2023 had been debited by ABSA.

ABSA did not give any reasons or communication for the cancellation of the policies. I had been paying since 2019 and the contributions that I had made on the premiums is close to Two Million Rands. There is no formal communication on this matter and there is no consideration of the implication of these cancellations for me and my family member should anything happen to us. This has compromised us as a family because we had made means to cover ourselves for critical issues of bereavement essentials. Some of these policies, family members had to go for medicals which ABSA paid for before they were accepted. I learnt from the ombudsman the ABSA canceled all the policies and accused me of being a *****ster and accused me of being like Rosemary Ndlovu who killed her family members for insurance money

In light of a financial advisor offering me as a consumer a product which they had explained the terms and conditions as well as a needs analysis having been conducted, it is my understanding that I should be in possession of a Record of Advice or a Record of no Advice which I was not furnished with for the policies. I was also never conscientiously aware that there is a limit to the number of policies I can have according to the ABSA investigation report I received from the ombudsman as I have affordability to ensure my entire family as when anything happens to them they are my responsibility to bury them in a dignified manner. I have businesses which are entities on their own. I can't just irresponsibly use company resources without compensation just because it's family, I have overheads and wages to pay for services rendered which is why a need was identified by your broker for me to cover my entire family. Absa should have conducted their due diligence and after deducting the first month's premiums ensured to notify me a the issue they have of the number of policies as each application went through an approval process which I had no involvement in. Furthermore my relatives signed all documents without prejudice and no signature was misrepresented. I feel very disrespected and my integrity is being made a mockery of and my character is being defamed, however when my premiums were being deducted and accepted by ABSA, my integrity was not questioned.

In conclusion, I feel that I have been deceived and misled by ABSA. They compelled me to take up their products and to leave the reliable and honest financial institutions that were serving me with respect and dignity. I was led to take up products that I contributed almost two-million-rand worth of premiums since 2019 and now after my very first claim, they decide to disown me of what is due to me. I feel like, through ABSA, I have invested in a ****ming institution which will take up your money and scheme to disenfranchise you when you have to get what is due to you. What is surprising is that there is absolutely no communication with me and even on the cancellation of my policies which was done without any formal communication. I have learnt that they have begun to reinstate some of the policies but still not communicating with me.