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Travel insurance carriers release position statements when current events affect coverage.  Once an event is considered foreseeable, new policies purchased will not cover that event.  This is most common when hurricanes and tropical storms are named, they are considered foreseeable.  The following is a statement from CSA on Tropical Storm Karl.

Tropical Storm Karl

9/14/2010

This afternoon, Tropical Storm Karl has formed in the western Caribbean Sea.  Forecasters predict that the storm will move over the Yucatan peninsula before heading to the Bay of Campeche, where it would likely strengthen.  Certain CSA Travel Protection plans offer coverage for some effects of adverse weather and natural disasters.  Customers are strongly encouraged to read their Certificate of Insurance or Insurance Policy for details regarding their available coverage.  For plans that do offer coverage for adverse weather and natural disasters, please note that there is no coverage for this specific storm under any plans purchased on or after September 14, 2010.

Travel insurance carriers often share customer experiences and testimonials in their newsletters.  The earthquake in Chile earlier this year was an opportunity for Travelex to help travelers whose vacation was affected.  The following is from the Travelex newsletter and is a review from the agent that organized the trip.

Traveling to Antarctica and Easter Island in February was the trip of a lifetime for myself and my group of 32 passengers. When the day of travel had arrived so had one of the biggest snowstorms of the decade. We had to determine how to get everyone to Buenos Aires prior to our departure for Antarctica; 5 travelers had to be rerouted, many of them 1-2 days later. Some arrived without luggage so they did some last-minute shopping in Usushia and from the shop onboard our ship. Antarctica was amazing and when that part of the journey ended, 16 of us headed for Easter Island – the most remote island in the world. Our 3 day tour went beautifully. The day of our departure, we had hired a coach to take us to watch the sunrise over the Moai statues; instead we heard sirens. Through a cell phone, CNN told us there was an earthquake in Chile and a tsunami warning for Easter Island! We quickly gathered warm clothes, medicines, passports and valuables and boarded the coach to the top of the volcano where we watched boats head out to sea to avoid damage. We stood wi Read more…

We all know that insurance is meant to protect our assets. If something expensive happens that’s beyond our control, the ability to file an insurance claim means we don’t have to come up with the money to pay for it ourselves. However, we’ve found some strange insurance claims out there. We can’t believe some of these have even filed in the first place. More astonishingly, some of these claims were actually paid. Here are eight of the weirdest we’ve found:

1. Abducted by aliens We generally think that alien abduction only happens on the X-Files. But some people take it very seriously because there’s a market for alien abduction insurance. Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson (GRIP), a London-based insurance brokerage, specializes in strange types of insurance – anything from immaculate conception insurance to alien abduction insurance. In fact, the company even paid a claim once. GRIP paid out one million pounds to a man in Britain who claimed to have been abducted. True, the man was a business partner with the managing director of GRIP, but the claim was still paid.

2. Dentures lost at sea Cruises are popular vacations, among the old and the young alike. However, it the sea gets choppy, you might find yourself getting seasick. One man found this out the hard way when he lost his dentures overboard. His cruise ship was experiencing rough waters in the Bay of Biscay, and his stomach was experiencing a rather upset feeling. As he vomited over the side of the ship, his dentures fell into the water, and were lost to the depths. Lucky for him, his travel insurance decided that his false teeth constituted “lost baggage.”

3. Had a bad hair

Read more…

The Crime Statistics for South Africa were released yesterday. These crime numbers are not anything to be proud of – and remain much too high – but there are some positives that we might be able to reflect upon!

Crime in South Africa by the numbers

There were several declines in the crimes reported and recorded:

• The murder rate has showed its largest decline since 1995, falling below 17 000 for the past year.
• There were 16 894 murders in the year ended March 31, compared to the 18 148 murdered the previous year, representing a 7.2% drop in absolute numbers and 8.6% in the murder ratio to 34.1 murders per 100 000 South Africans.
• The number of attempted murders dropped by 4.9%, from 18 298 cases to 17 410 cases.
• Sexual crimes, which now include the rape of men and pornography, fell 4.4% to 68 332 cases and resulted in 26 311 arrests.
• A total of 64 670 people were the victims of street robberies, a drop of 10.4% on the previous year.

Unfortunately there were increases in house and business robberies of 1.9 and 4.4% respectively.

Vehicle related crimes and Car Insurance

For the purposes of the Car Insurance Blog we need to place a special focus on vehicle related crimes:

• There were 13 902 car hijackings, which represented a 6.8% decline on the previous year.
• Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal were the worst affected with 7 444 and 3 715 cases respectively.
• Both provinces showed decreases compared to the previous year, of 2.8% and 8.5% respectively.

Also important is to not that there were decreases were in cash-in-transit heists, down 7.3%, with 52 arrests, and bank robberies, down 8.8%. Many vehicle owners

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Estimates show that as many as 10,000 people nationwide may have been duped by Association of Independent Managers (AIM). Nancy Stowe is one of them, according to WBTV. She was looking for affordable healthcare coverage online and contacted the North Carolina Department of Insurance for a reference before completing a purchase. “They had nothing that made me think this wouldn’t be a good purchase,” Stowe told WBTV. So she went ahead and purchased coverage from AIM, but now she’s out thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills. “I am going to testify in this cease and desist order being put up against this company by the state of North Carolina,” Stowe told WBTV.

Stowe thought she was getting a good deal– paying hundreds less for coverage for her and her husband. She checked out AIM’s website and membership materials and moved forward with her purchase. Her premium was more than $400 a month, but then Stowe’d doctor told her all of her medical bills were being denied by her insurance company. “It was so frustrating because I owed thousands of dollars, plus all of those monthly premiums my boss had reimbursed me for,” Stowe told WBTV.

WBTV offered some tips to help others from going through what Stowe went through. Their tips include:

• Always remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
• Deal only with licensed agents and companies.
• If you have any doubt, call your state’s Department of Insurance, Consumer Services Division.
• If the agent you are dealing with starts becoming vague or hard to reach, consider canceling.
• Do NOT sign any blank application or claims forms.
• NEVER pay premiums in cash.
• Keep all your records and proof of payments.
• You can always call your insurance company (the company who has the policy) to confirm your policy exists and is what you think it is.

Some scams to look out for when it comes to insurance include:

• Companies that try to look and act like licensed insurance companies when they’re not. They offer low rates rega

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The AA has named fraud as a major contributor to a 31% increase in car insurance premiums, over the past 12 months.

According to the motoring organisation, the typical cost of fully comprehensive cover currently stands at £704, premiums having risen at their fastest rate since records began 16 years ago.

Furthermore, premiums for younger drivers are rising at an above average rate, with those aged under 30 having to accommodate an 11.5% hike the past quarter alone.

AA Insurance director, Simon Douglas, comments: “While the organised ‘cash for crash’ scams that ripped millions of pounds off insurers have made headlines, the problem of car insurance fraud is much deeper and has become one of the principal drivers of insurance premium inflation.”

Last week, Co-operative Insurance suggested that the UK’s honest motorists are paying £1.25 billion a year to support the activities of dishonest drivers.

According to research from the insurer, the average car insurance premium carries a £50 penalty to cover costs incurred by uninsured and fraudulent road users.