Credit Life Claim ***

Since May this year, I have been backwards and forwards to ABSA, sometimes via email, sometimes via their call-centre, about this claim. Today I received notice that my claim was turned down.

A bit of background, I was retrenched July 2018. I had enough money saved up to survive for a while, so I decided to take a sabbatical to pursue a couple of personal projects. My money started running out in March 2019, and that was when I actively started looking for work again.

But, in April 2019, I started having problems with my health. I was ill for about nine months in total in 2019, unable to work or to look for work. I was hospitalised three times in 2019.

I later found out that two of the positions I app**** for in March and April 2019 were prepared to make me offers of employment, had I not disappeared off the map for nine months.

Due to my disability, it is challenging for me to find work, but I am highly skilled in my profession, and am usually able to find a suitably accommodating employer, given enough time and effort on my part.

I started looking for work again in January 2020, but was still not successful by the time the hard lockdown went into effect in March. I held a short-term contract position in June and July this year, but nothing since then. I believe that the impact of Covid-19 significantly adversely affected my chances of finding work.

Through ABSA’s call-centre, I discovered three things about my Credit Life Policy:

- You can only claim for retrenchment if it was an involuntary retrenchment, voluntary retrenchments are excluded. In my case, even though my former employer was making my life difficult, and clearly there was no future for me there, the fact that I accepted a voluntary retrenchment to save myself the inconvenience and pain of a protracted legal battle meant that I am not covered under this clause, as I discovered today.

- According to the consultants at ABSA’s call-centre, I also cannot claim for loss of income due to my three hospitalisations last year, and my illness over a period of nine months last year, due to the fact that mental illnesses are excluded from both the disability and dread disease clauses of my ABSA credit life policy. Given that mental illnesses are defined as disabilities under the Mental Health Care Act, in my view this policy is discriminatory.

- Yes, I was technically unemployed before the lockdown, and therefore am not covered for loss of income due to Covid-19, but given that I was ill for most of 2019, are you surprised that this was the case?

All of this was documented over multiple emails that I sent through to ABSA on several occasions. While I appreciate that, due the effects of Covid-19, ABSA must be under pressure from the volume of claims, my experience was that ABSA was extremely unhelpful with regards to what was required to submit a claim, and the process took months, only to end in disappointment. A complete waste of time! What is my credit life policy really worth to me, after all?