DOUBLE STANDARDS, DISHONESTY AND NON-TRANSPARENT INSURANCE STANDARDS OR REQUIREMENTS - OLD MUTUAL

Greetings.

I have a policy with Old Mutual Insure, of which I lodged two claims, namely, *** and *** in January 2024.

The first claim *** came back citing that my property is under-insured and for that reason the claim would not be settled in full.

I then disputed their notion as nonsense by citing that my property was only registered on 27.03.2023. Secondly, the value at which the property is insured came from the lender, NEDBANK with whom I have a home loan. Practically, this property gelongs to NEDBANK until I have settled the bobd in full hence I believe NEDBANK followed due evaluation process to tell me how much should I insure my property for, whid I did. Therefore, it is nonsensical for anyone to suggest that my property is under-insured. Moreover. Old Mutual Insure did not say anything or give me a heads up in the begining when I signed or took a homeowners insurance with them.

Upon submitting evidence that the value I insured my property with was not thumb-sucked on my side but it came from NEDBANK. It did not take long for them to realize their mistake of which my claim of R6004 was paid full less the access fee.

The secondly claim (due to flooding on Christmas Eve, claim reference number *** was assigned a different assessor to the first one of which the second assessor, Gavin Holder, came to my house to assess the damage. The assessor then sent two service providers to my house for quotations purposes.

To my surprise, I was called by Old Mutual Insure claiming that my house or property was under-insured, therefore, they would pay me an average claim not the full claim. Mind you, the assessor assigned by Old Mutual Insure assessed the damage and got quotations in terms of how much it would cost to fix the whole mess. Nevertheless, Old Mutual Insure was adamant that my property was under-insured hence they would not settle the insurance claim in question un full.

I then told them that we have been there before with claim number *** which was resolved amicably. This was a case study that I referred to them to say they cannot have double standards. Even in the court of law, this matter would be in my favour if the case law were to be consired that in a space of two weeks, a matter between myself and Old Mutual Insure was resolved amicably in my favour.

However, they were arrogant and their supervisor, Adelien Jordaan did not come back to me after I had requested her to intervene. Instead she sent the same consultant who reports to her, whom I was not happy with his assessment, Bongani Khanyile to tell me that her supervisor, Adelien had said there was no different conclusion she would arrive at. Hence she was nit willing to speak to me. I then felt thus was unprofessiinal and ********* of Edelien to do. How did she know what is it that I wanted to discuss with her? Anyway, I requested to speak to her superior whom I was given by the name if Tumelo. We discussed at length with Tumelo whereby I raised my disatisfaction. Tumelo even suggested that a different assessor can be sent to my house of which I said that would make no difference because their rates and process of calculating a value at risk (VAR) was fixed. However, my dissatisfaction was that Old Mutual Insure was neither honest nor transparent. Why didnt they they tell me on the inception of my policy to use they rates (per square meters) per room in order to ensure that I was nit under-insured? Had Old Mutual Insure communicated been transparent from the onset, I would hace adjusted my insurance cover to be inline with their standard. However, that was not the case because it was obvious that they hide such standards in order to use them against claims as a reason not to pay. This is what I told Tumelo. However, seeing that I was not being heard, I agreed to receive an average claim but told them I would take the matter forward.

The next thing, I received an email from Gavin Holder, the assessor requesting me to sign ir accept the avarage claim for Old Mutual Insure to process my payment. Mind you, I had not received feedback or progress from Gavin Holder until I got the news ir verdict from Old Mutual Insure thst my house was under-insured. This is the same assessor who came to my house and requested my building plan which I gave him not knowing he was going to use it against me because I got it Old Mutual Insure has their own rates that use to calculate the value of the property as per per each building or room square meters. My question is, what would have been used had the building plan been unavailable because I had bought the house. I did not build it. However, I was lucky because the previous owner had given the building plan to me. Another question, how do they know is the plan is 100% correct or not, because I know for a fact that the plan used by Gavin Holder is not 100% correct because other buildings or drawibgs are in the plan but not physically built. This makes me even to doubt some square meters of the actual rooms. According to a building plan, there is a standalone double door additional garage. Yet the actual building does not have such.

Either way, Old Mutual Insure should have been transparent with me from the begining. They should have told me their standard and requurements for ensuring my property met their standards in terms on valuations. However, they did nit do that because they arw looking for reasons not to pay claims. I am not surprised Old Mutual has had a social media backlash, recently.

In closing, I need Old Mutual Insure to settle claim number *** in full. How do I raise the deficit or shortfall when I am insured? The initial claim as per the assessors calculation is R101k but Old Mutual Insure settled or paid to my accound only R76k. This means some of the damages as assessed and quantified by their assessor, Gavin Holder, would not be fixed hence I have not started fixing my property because claim was not paid in full.