Completely ********* Insurance Practices

When ***** insurers have no legit basis to decline a claim, they can sometimes practice some underhanded tactics to avoid or eventually deny a claim, and leave hardworking policyholders' VALID claims unfairly unpaid.

I would urge every consumer who intend to log a claim with Naked Insurance to do due diligence regarding ********* business conduct practised by some insurers.

I will use my experience with Hollard / Naked insurance to show some CLEAR examples of these tactics:

1) Overly Burdensome Demands : Although the insurance company has a duty to investigate a claim, the insurer’s power to request information and documents cannot be used to harass or abuse policyholders. If the insurance company is making unreasonable demands unrelated to substantiation of your claim, this practice can justify bad faith liability.

A clear example of this in my case: After an accident, I transported someone (whom I do not know the identity of) to the hospital, and dropped them at ER. I provided my tracker log for the entire month to validate all my trips and description of events. And now, Naked is asking me to provide the personal medical records of the person. This is clearly a dirty attempt to fail the claim because (a) The hospital would not willingly hand over any patients records to any random stranger, no matter how nicely I ask and (b), I do not even know the persons name, as I have explained to Naked, the person was a complete stranger to me and also in no state to give this information anyway... so, even if I demanded his hospital records at gunpoint, whose records would I even ask for? This is clearly an IMPOSSIBLE request placed on a policy holder and a very ********* tactic to deny a claim. Theres no contractual requirement for a claimant to somehow have medical records of patients he transports to the hospital. This can never be used as a valid requirement to a claim.

2) Delays in Resolving a Claim: This is something I have actually seen in more than one occasion since insuring with Naked. As a client, I find myself often having to ask "what is the status / delay on this?" and getting nothing but generic responses with no concrete information. This is a very *********, yet effective way to frustrate and discourage clients to continue with their valid claims. This is a tactic Naked is very fami**** with!

3) Inappropriate Investigation Tactics: When a policyholder files a claim, an insurer has a legal duty to conduct a timely and thorough investigation of the claim. The investigation must include determination of the cause of loss and a valuation of the claim. Insurance companies sometimes will fail to conduct a careful investigation or ignore important evidence regarding a claim to justify a position that minimizes the insurer’s liability. Or simply lay this responsibility on the policy holder, since this increases the points of failure in the process, in the obvious favour of the insurer.

This is also something I have personally witnessed on two separate occasions with Naked. More recently, they have requested that I produce a detailed invoice from a restaurant I ate in, on the night of the accident. Firstly, this was weeks ago - thanks to their delays, and secondly, the accident happened while I was visiting another province. But I have supp**** the tracking logs as well as banking statements that should more than suffice to validate my story, and put me at the restaurant as I said - but it is a known "dirty trick" that, when your trained validators, who investigate for a living, cannot prove that something did NOT happen, they put the burden to the client to prove that it DID happen - thus, drastically increasing the difficulty of the claim and improving their chances of avoiding liability on a valid claim.

My question to them was, if this is really obtainable information, why dont YOU do your job as an investigator and obtain it then? I have even signed a consent form, allowing you to. Since there's no personal information attached to a restaurant bill, why do I have to find ways to obtain it? Why cant you? And they could not answer this. Its much easier for you to fail proving something happened, than it is for them to prove it didn't. That is what they're banking on. Completely *********!

They also asked me to provide proof that I called their emergency line on the night. And stated that the claim would be declined if I couldn't. (which, BTW, is also useless because I tried to call it twice with no luck)

I provided the screenshot to prove that I did call them, but the question is WHY? - Calling the emergency line is not a prerequisite to a valid claim so why? - This is YOUR line, why cant YOU check incoming calls to validate this? - What if I simply didnt think of calling them at the time? - What if I didnt have my phone / airtime at the time? - What if I asked someone nearby to use their phone for the call? - What if I was injured and in no state to make a call?

Why exactly is this a reason to deny my claim? They chose not to answer this too.

So where are we now?

Well, Naked Insurance is threatening to deny my claim because of "discrepancies". I have asked numerous times for an explanation of these so-called discrepancies and they have chosen to skip over that request each and every time. If these discrepancies are indeed valid, why cant you share them with me, the person who pays you a premium every single month to cover my items?

These tactics are not okay or even normal - but it some of the ways insurance ****** can give clients a runaround and avoid payouts. Please be aware and on the lookout for these, and seek legal assistance when you're uncertain.