Terrible experience with claims settlement at Santam and the ombudsman involved.

Dear Hallo Peter

I own a guesthouse and have been insured with Santam for many years, until I experienced a leak around the swimming pool which caused the paving to sag. Santam sent an assessor and we soon learnt that the claim in its totality was rejected. We took the matter to the Ombud. We asked Santam to please send us the Assessor’s report which they did, but some sections of this report were blacked out (redacted). We thought this was strange and insisted on an unredacted report which we were denied. We were shocked at the lack of transparency from Santam, but we were even more shocked when the Ombud agreed that Santam doesn’t have to be transparent. With a bit of spy work we managed to obtain the original, unredacted report, and as we expected the Assessor recommended payment, as he felt this to be a valid claim. Regardless of the merits of the claim, we can never trust Santam or the Ombud again since their behavior, in our opinion, is highly ********* and borderline *****ulent.