SANTAM declines unregistered claims, then refuses to review their decision

I recently submitted a complaint to SANTAM, because more than one year after submitting four business claims to my broker, I found out that two of my claims were never registered, yet my broker told me they had been declined by SANTAM. How is that possible?

My broker never submitted two of my claims, but after ten weeks he arrived at my office to tell me verbally that the insurer had declined my claims. No documentation was provided in support of this, so he **** to cover up the fact that he had not registered my claims.

After this visit from my broker I submitted a complaint to SANTAM, not because my claims had not been registered (I did not know that at the time), but because my claims had not been assessed. I wanted to understand who and why had assessed my claims.

But SANTAM did nothing to verify my claims; they did not check if they had been registered, or assessed, or where the AOL was. All SANTAM did was ask my broker for input, and he spun them the same lie that my claims had been declined, and then SANTAM put that in writing to me that my claims had been declined.

So the manager of the SANTAM Complex Claims Division, Mbali Mbunda, did not bother confirming whether my claims had been registered and assessed. All she did was email my broker, who told her my claims had been declined, and then she repeated that in an email to me. That was the full extent of her investigation.

I then approached SANTAM earlier this year and submitted a request to review their decision to decline my unregistered claims in 2024. How could they have declined unregistered claims that did not exist?

SANTAM’s complaints department was not prepared to review their earlier decision and suggested I escalate my complaint to their internal arbitrator, which I did.

Fifteen days later I received an email from the office of the internal arbitrator that they were going to meet with the SANTAM claims department to discuss my request, which sounded promising.

But two days later I received another letter from the internal arbitrator stating that my claims had already been declined and she would not help me and I should escalate my request for a review of my unregistered claims to someone else!

SANTAM – what is the purpose of having an internal arbitrator who is supposed to be fair and impartial, but whose response to new information that my claims were never registered is “go somewhere else because I cannot / will not help you”.

When SANTAM receives a complaint, do you not verify that the claim exists, i.e. has been registered, processed, approved or declined? Did Mbali Mbunda not think that it was odd that there was ZERO documentation on the complaints I submitted to her, nor that there were no claim numbers? And she still declined the claims?

I think the entire insurance industry needs to hear how you treat policyholders and how you bully them by avoiding investigating cases like mine where your staff decline claims that were never registered nor assessed.

In summary: Claim 1: my client's stock - registered, assessed and approved Claim 2: BI - registered, assessed and approved Claim 3: my stock - never registered, never assessed but declined Claim 4: AI*** -never registered, never assessed, but declined