Puma Insurance Brokers (Pty) Ltd

Good news for Santam

The Ombudsman’s 2013 report, which was released last week, shows that Santam, South Africa’s leading short-term insurer can be ranked as an industry leader in claims payment and dealing fairly with policyholder complaints.

Santam is the country’s largest short-term insurer and the published results by the Ombudsman recognises their  commitment to paying claims which is believed to be the real test of insurance.

The recently published OSTI (Ombudsman for Short-Term Insurance) statistics revealed that of the total number of claims that Santam received in 2013, only 2 in every thousand were contested and, even on independent third party reassessment by the Ombudsman, only 29% of these contested claims were overturned.

This means that by far the majority of contested claims (over 70%), are upheld by the Ombudsman in favour of Santam. This is better than the industry standard of 32.91%. The overturn rate is for personal lines claims only.

Driverless cars and insurance

Google's driverless cars have covered over 1.1 million kilometres during testing in the US, without receiving a single traffic fine. One has to think what affect this will have on the number of accidents and of course, the need for vehicle insurance in the future.

Autonomous cars will be programmed to operate within the law, which means that legislation will have to be changed in deciding who will be held responsible for fines or accidents — the owner of the vehicle or the vehicle manufacturer?

Also read the Nine tips to prevent remote jamming

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