SEVERE STANDARD BANK SERVICE DELIVERY ISSUES

To whom it may concern,

We’ve had a Home Loan with Standard Bank that commenced 2021.03.01. To date, despite numerous requests, we have not received a single statement to track our payments. This presents obvious issues in basic service delivery, but this is not our main concern.

Upon entering into a bond agreement, we rejected the offer from Standard Bank Insurance and provided proof of our own insurance. Recently we’ve discovered, through a cryptic mail from SB Insurance, that a premium has gone down monthly as part of our debit order. We’ve been dealing with SB Insurance for the past three months trying to get this policy cancelled and receive a refund. The only proof we’ve been given that the policy has been cancelled was a verbal confirmation via phone. Further, SB Insurance could only verbally confirm that they have refunded half of the premiums deducted, absurdly stating that our preferred insurers should pay the other half. This alleged refund was also paid directly into our bond account, against our instruction, and when asked for a proof of payment, none could be provided.

In short, Standard Bank have been deducting money off our account for an insurance policy we explicitly rejected. By refunding this amount into our bond account, Standard Bank are effectively paying themselves for committing this error. This should raise ethical concerns which I will not elaborate on.

When we aired this grievances, we learned that four friends, all with Home Loans from Standard Bank, experienced the exact same insurance issue. This appears to be a very common.

We request that Standard Bank issue us with monthly statements. We request they issue us proof that their insurance policy has been cancelled. We request that Standard Bank refund the premiums they charged us, and should it be the case that interest was payable on these premium, that the interest gets refunded as well.

Regards, Henry Boardman