Santam offers minimal settlement for jewellery claim

A few weeks ago my wife was ****** of her wedding and engagement ring however only the engagement ring was insured through Santam.

The incident took place Monday 21/07/2025 and the claim was made immediately. The assessor was assigned Thursday 24/07/2025 and I was told he would contact me soon. Monday the following week (28/07/2025) the assessor had still not yet contacted me and called the claims administrator to get the contact details of the assessor. The claims administrator told me the assessor would call me soon(once again). After a few hours he still hadn’t called me at which point I then decided to call him.

After apologising for not yet calling he said should go to a few Jewellery shops to see if we could get a quote for something similar to what she had The ring was insured for over R330 000 as per the Valuation done by Jack Friedman, so we looked for a ring in that price range.

Once my wife found a similar piece she liked we then sent the quote to the asessor. 2 days later I was told the quote was handed to the moderator and I should await feedback. A week later, I received a call from the assessor to say that the moderator has a settlement offer of an ‘exact ring’ to be made to the value of R104 000 or I could take the cash payout.

I declined this option and posed many questions to Santam of which hardly any were answered. This is what angered me.

My main concern is that the ring was valued at R330k+ but you are telling me it only costs around R100k to replace the ring. This makes absolutely no sense seeing as I have been paying a premium based on R330k. If it only costs a 3rd of the value to replace it then why has Santam been making me pay 3x the premium knowing full well that It doesnt cost as much to replace the item and that they will not compensate me based on this value. Is this not acting under false pretenses??

My next question to Santam was should I accept the deal, what will the valuation of the new ring be? How is an exact replacement worth a third of the price? Something doesnt make sense.

I have been a client of SANTAM for a number of years and I have always been happy with your service. However, this offer is not what I expect from a leading company such as SANTAM. This is the kind of offer I would expect had I been insured with a lower level Insurance company. I will most likely take my business elsewhere after this terrible experience.

I hope that a sensible person will reach out to me to try and fix this problem. If not then I would just like people to know how these guys operate and they are not upfront with you from the start. They take your money for years and when you file a claim they find all the reasons not to pay or they only willing to pay you a fraction of the policy value.

So sad. Highly irate ex Santam client