What a week! It’s been ‘claim time’ at WealthDesign this week it seems. We’ve been helping our clients out, at the most important end of the insurance puzzle – when they most need it.
As much as I would prefer my clients weren’t having to claim on their insurance, because they were healthy and happy, I feel privileged to be able to help them in their hour of need. It reinforces why I’m a firm believer in insurance, and why we always work backwards, from a claim stance. We want to know that if one of our clients needs to claim, we can hand-on-heart know that they will be looked after, both by us, and by the insurance company.
This is why we are very careful around the process of putting cover in place, and with who we trust to look after our clients. In the past few weeks, two of the larger insurers have been bought out by third parties. What impact this has on their claim handling process is still to be seen. When people say “oh it’s business as usual” I don’t quite believe them as all culture flows from the top down. If you change the focus from partnerships between the client and the insurer and if the company starts to look more at profits than providing quality outcomes – things can get slippery. Often people don’t believe insurance companies work to pay out claims, but we know some of them do. The companies we work with have a clear client focus and pride themselves in paying claims – so don’t be put off!
This week at WealthDesign we’ve been working with a guy on an income protection case (he received his first cheque this week), a lady with a crippling lung disease (hopefully this will be sorted early next week) and a guy with a heart problem. That’s not to mention two or three hospitalisation cases ranging from a specialist test to a hip replacement.
Today there are over 60,000 people on waiting list for operations alone. The stress and heart ache this causes is unimaginable. I know why I carry medical insurance personally – I see the impact of people not having it, every second day.
I see cases where people put off buying insurance or just don’t get around to the paper work, and the result can be financially disastrous, causing much stress to the client and their family.
So after a week like this has been, I wonder why buying insurance is such a grudge purchase – why do people put off this very important part of their financial lives? But then they’re not in my shoes, dealing with the fall out of not being insured. Perhaps they should be, just for a while, to see what can happen when you’re not covered.
Give me a call, email me, whatever it takes to make sure that you and your family are covered. Expect the best, but have a plan in place for the worst – just in case.
John Barber
WealthDesign – a life well planned