Dissatisfaction, bad treatment and incompetence by Old Mutual

Greetings. I am writing to raise the heartfelt dissatisfaction, bad treatment and incompetence shown to me by Old Mutual. On the 18th of December my father passed away and I went to claim on the 19th of December at the Old mutual branch in King Williams Town to prepare for the funeral which was to be held on the 23rd of December 2023.

I took a policy with them on behalf of my father in 2010 and have been the main policy payer from the first premium to the last. Upon claiming and submitting documents, I never received any correspondence from Old Mutual - not even once, right up until the day of the funeral. On the 10 of Janury 2024 we went back to Old Mutual and were told to resubmit documents as if it was the first time we were submitting the claim. Upon doing that, we were informed that there was an unknown beneficiary and got advised to submit an affidavit which stated that we had no knowledge of who this beneficiary is and that the claim should be paid to my account. My mother, myself and my two sisters submitted this affidavit, we still received zero feedback up until the 18th of January 2024 which stated that they "have received my final expense request and upon receipt of all requirements the claim would be processed in 2 days". To this day which is the 21st of January, I do not know what future requirements I should submit and furthermore I was not asked to open a bank account with them and also wasn't asked for my personal account number for the money to be deposited in; which brings me so much confusion because where exactly are they going to be processing this claim

This is disheartening because Old Mutual is a trusted service provider and that is why we took a funeral policy with them in the first place. The fact that I buried my father without their help after paying timeously for 13 years has made me lose trust in them as an entire company - it feels as though I took a funeral policy with these ****mer fly-by-night companies. This has been affecting my personal wellbeing because I have had to take loans and have been unable to grieve properly because of all this back and forth and the stress that Old Mutual has brought into my life.