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Insurance Brokers

Knowledge is power

The very nature of insurance requires that only a few individuals have losses, whilst the many contribute. For this reason, some customers can go through a lifetime with no issues on any of their insurances. This is one of the reasons we often shop and select products based on price. However, when there is a problem, it can often be a distressing time for the customer.

Reduced life insurance pay-out

Life insurance is often arranged for the benefit of a family member. When an allegation is made that a policy has not been arranged correctly after an insured event occurs (in this case the event would be a death) it can sometimes be tricky to know what to do.

Movo Director Dan Ricci was approached by a family friend who had been told, following the death of her father, that he had failed to declare that he had cirrhosis of the liver 20 years prior to arranging the policy. The insurers therefore offered to pay only 40% of the value of the policy which was £20,000 rather than £50,000 on the basis that they would not have agreed to insure him had they known the full facts.

The beneficiary of the policy was about to accept the offer when Dan intervened and provided his assistance.

Noting that this customer’s policy would be dealt with under The Consumer Disclosure Act he begun to look into the paperwork.

Insurers are required under this Act to formulate question in a manner that they are not expected to have to guess what is “material” to the insurer. Instead, they need only answer the question on the forms.

The questions within the online application only asked whether he has had any DISORDER of the liver in the LAST 5 years.

The policy holder had completed the form as “No”, because his liver disease had been diagnosed 20 years before; and and there were no other questions relating to a previous condition, such as have you ever had any disorder of the liver.

On this basis we formulated a response to the insurer pointing out they had no right to refuse indemnity. The final outcome was a 100% pay-out for the daughter just as the father had intended.

This is an example of why, when arranging a life insurance policy, expert advice should be sought. This is also a good example of how an insurer can make mistakes but are prepared to be fair when confronted with the facts.

Knowledge is power: make sure you have it on your side

Categories
Insurance Brokers

Important Notice

At Movo we believe everyone’s circumstances are different and that whilst the generic advice contained in our knowledge hub is helpful, it should not be relied upon on without discussion first. Talking to us is free so enjoy our articles and we look forward to hearing from you!

The Claim Zone – Sharing with our customer’s useful claims experiences.

Title: The value of Dash Cams

Our client operates a small fleet of vehicles in London and one of his drivers was recently involved in a major traffic incident on the motorway.

The Insured’s driver was cruising in the slow lane of the motorway when a vehicle attempted to pull in front of him. This driver misjudged where our driver was and clipped the side of their car against the front of our insured’s vehicle. This caused the vehicle to career across three lanes of traffic causing a fairly sizeable incident which fortunately did not result in any casualties.

If possible, when there is a third party fault claim, we will try and approach their insurers first and offer them a chance to carry out the repairs directly. This is to ensure that our clients do not have to pay an excess in dealing with their repairs and costs are kept to a minimum.

On this occasion we approached the third party insurers who promptly told us they did not accept that it was their drivers fault.

Fortunately, our client had irrefutable dash cam evidence which meant he had a successful defence against the third party allegations. A claim of this size could have had a serious impact on their claims experience and future insurance costs.

Many insurers now insist on dash cams within vehicles and this is an example how a £200 investment saved this firm thousands in future insurance premiums.

I would like to find out more

Need a second opinion on your claim? Give us a call and see how we can help.

Categories
Insurance Brokers

Demystifying Cyber Liability Insurance

In 2018 what do we need to know about cyber threats?

It’s your workforce not technology that poses the biggest threat – 95% of successful cyber-attacks are the result of a phishing scam*. In many cases when staff bring personal devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones into work, they are not protected by the company’s security network. This presents an opportunity for hackers to directly access company data through these devices.

The UK’s 5.4 million small businesses are collectively attacked more than seven million times a year – This costs the UK economy £5.26bn, according to a survey carried out by the Federation of Small Businesses. It’s estimated that 93% of small businesses have some kind of cyber security in place, but still about 66% of small companies have been a victim of cybercrime in the last two years.

Cybercrime accounted for almost 30% of all crimes recorded in the UK from July 2016 to July 2017 – Figures issued by Office for National Statistics revealed the shocking extent of cybercrime. There were an additional 2.5 million incidents of bank and credit card fraud. These figures given are only for reported incidents in the UK, which means that the real figure is likely to be a lot higher.

Now we know the headline facts that affect SME businesses in the UK including our own business as we write, what can we do about it?

So what is Cyber Liability Insurance?
Cyber Liability Insurance protects your business against the risks associated with using the internet and storing information online. The risks in the main come from online attacks from hackers and cyber criminals looking for an easy target.

Cyber Liability Insurance is different from a traditional commercial liability insurance policy which is unlikely to protect you against ALL cyber exposures. Standard policies are written to insure against physical loss and injury and will do very little, if anything, against protecting you from digital/electronic damages and the costs that you may incur from this.

How does it protect you?
Cyber Liability Insurance protects you to the effect that it covers the costs incurred as a result of a cyber-attack, computer virus or data security breach.

Data breaches – Increased online consumer spending has placed more responsibility on companies to protect clients’ personal information.

Business/Network Interruption – If your primary business operations require the use of computer systems, a disaster that cripples your ability to transmit data could cause you or a third party that depends on your services to lose potential revenue. From a server failure to a data breach, such an incident can affect your day-to-day operations. Time and resources that normally would have gone elsewhere will need to be directed towards the problem to avoid further losses. This is especially important as denial of service attacks by hackers have been on the increase. Such attacks block access to certain websites by either rerouting traffic to a different site or overloading an organisation’s server.

Intellectual Property Rights – Your company’s online presence, whether it be through a corporate website, blogs or news items, or social media, opens you up to some of the same exposures faced by publishers. This can include libel, copyright or trademark infringement and defamation, amongst other things.

Damages to a third-party system – If an email sent from your server has a virus that crashes the system of a customer, or the software which your company distributes fails, resulting in a loss for a third party, you could be held liable for the damages.

System Failure – A natural disaster, malicious activity or fire could all cause physical damages that could result in data or code loss.

How much do you need this cover?
I would suggest if you are sitting at work reading this article, or you use the device you are reading this on for work, then you should consider talking to us about what cover is appropriate for you.

If you have a website, use the internet to trade, handle customer or employee information, or use a third party host to store your website or data in the cloud, you need Cyber Liability Insurance.

As technology advances, unfortunately so does risk. Advances in technology helps your business stay in front of your competition and may make life easier for you at work. Ensure sure you have the right protection in place which prevents you paying the cost of cyber criminals.

Inviting Movo into your business means we will not only help you understand what cover suits your business best, but we will also share our expertise with you to help you take preventative measures against an attack in the first place. As we always say to our clients, ‘knowledge is power’.

Short snippets to take from this article.

  • Your employees are the weakest link in your business when it comes to cyber security.
  • The question is now probably ‘when’ and not ‘if’ your business will be targeted by a cyber-attack.
  • A Cyber Security Awareness guide available to staff may have the biggest impact in mitigating the risk faced by your business.

*Ironscales 2017 Email Security Report

Categories
Insurance Brokers

Important Notice

At Movo we believe everyone’s circumstances are different and that whilst the generic advice contained in our knowledge hub is helpful, it should not be relied upon on without discussion first. Talking to us is free so enjoy our articles and we look forward to hearing from you!

Cover explained. Plain talking. No jargon

Legal Expenses

What is Legal Expenses?

This is a product designed to help you have access to legal representation should it be needed. Not every eventuality is covered but many of the common disputes are.

This is a product that is rarely discussed by clients and one that definitely deserves more attention.

Who can get legal expenses cover?

Individuals, families, homeowners, business and motorists.

Do I need this cover?

This is an individual decision but if legal expenses cover is available and reasonably priced, we would advise to purchase it because we have seen some of our clients benefit greatly from the product.

We have unfortunately, also seen some clients be frustrated by this cover.

Why?

Because ultimately legal expenses insurers will (usually) only provide cover when there is a greater probability of success than not. Some of us refer to this as the 50/50 clause. This means there needs to be a 51% chance of success for cover to be provided. This can prove a source of frustration for clients, especially when this is not explained.

Who decides if there is a good chance of success?

Usually it is decided by the legal representation which is provided by the insurers.

I would like to find out more

Give us a call.

We provide free advice to everyone, so give us a call and we will be delighted to help.

Categories
Insurance Brokers

Important Notice

At Movo we believe everyone’s circumstances are different and that whilst the generic advice contained in our knowledge hub is helpful, it should not be relied upon on without discussion first. Talking to us is free so enjoy our articles and we look forward to hearing from you!

The Claim Zone – Sharing useful claims experiences with our customers

Title: Accidentally covered

It is often the case that policies will give ‘additional’ elements of cover included within their policies. Products vary from one insurer to another and change over time.

Often these are overlooked and sometimes, a claim can happen and the client will not think to come to us as he does not believe this will be covered.

This is what happened earlier this year when a client happened to mention in passing that they had a computer virus issue.

The broker who deals with this account always tries to arrange policies that have plenty of added ‘extra’s’ and confirmed to the client they had £50,000 of ‘free’ cyber cover included in their policy.

The client was ecstatic that some of his losses were covered by his insurers, QBE.

The end result was a very happy client and a payment of around £15,000.

I would like to find out more

Need a second opinion on your claim? Give us a call and see how we can help.