Like many readers, I was upset to hear about the death of Abby Hartley, a mother aged 41, who fell seriously ill and contracted septicemia while enjoying a second honeymoon in Bali. She was placed in an induced coma on August 15 and sadly died on Sunday (September 09) surrounded by her husband and two children. Her family sought help from her travel insurer who denied the […]
Is travel insurance free with your credit card better than Corporate Travel Insurance?
Most insurance brokers and travel insurers would immediately say, of course not! Corporate Travel is the Rolls Royce of travel insurance. Well, free travel insurance with a credit card is better for one insurer when it comes to cancellation due to illness between the date of purchasing the tickets and the start of the travel. In this case, the Insured had been with the same […]
Making sure you make your monthly car insurance payments
A matter has been brought to us by a broker whose daughter purchased motor insurance on a month by month basis. It appears she did not use her dad but purchased it through what appears to be an authorised representative of the insurer. I could stand corrected on this as it is only early days. Anyway, on the day the monthly payment was meant to […]
Beware the hire car scam
I received the following email from a broker this morning; Hi Allan, Hope your well and keep the blogs coming. I thought this may be something that you may find interesting. Please find attached a notice of Intention to sue that was sent to my friend. I think there maybe something wrong with the whole situation. To put you in the picture my friend […]
A blog question on public liability leads to 3 issues around leases.
A broker contacted me following a concerned client of hers who had been joined in an action where someone had fallen over a step in a commercial body corporate complex. The broker was not aware of the client owning a commercial strata in the complex. The Strata insurer was prepared to defend the body corporate but not the individual unit holder. When I was approached […]
Serious amounts of lead in some Hashmi eyeliners.
I often ask you to keep your eye out for our warnings on recalled products. This one I want you to keep your eyes well away from. The NSW Health Department uncovered the issue when 3 children from the same family became sick. On testing two eyeliners, namely Hashmi Surmi Special and Hashmi Kohl Aswad, it was found they were a staggering 84 per cent […]
Blog question – Possible time gap in coverage when changing insurers
One of the questions I received yesterday read: “I seem to recall a case where a customer switched insurers, neither insurer’s policy specified a start or expiry time, only a date. A incident causing rise to a claim occurred on that specific date and both Insurer’s were passing responsibility to the other. What I can’t recall is the outcome, which insurer was ultimately responsible and […]
Compulsory Third Party Insurance Explained
When the statistics came out showing just how few people understood Compulsory Third Party Insurance, it created quite a discussion with several of my longest standing friends. Within LMI, there are a number of our staff who have been involved in motor vehicle accidents where the third party had no insurance at all. The worst was an overseas student, who had borrowed a friend’s car, […]
Which small businesses have mandatory data breach reporting obligations? + 1st Quarter statistics
Another topic I have written a lot on is the Federal Government’s mandatory reporting regime. I have been asked many times to explain the obligations on small business and so I outline them below. After that I provide some stats at a high level on the first quarter reporting. From 22 February 2018, the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme (“NDB scheme”) requires a wide range of […]
Different landlord – similar issue
This is another issue that I have posted warnings on several times over the past few months. It was reported recently that a Perth landlord was hit with a huge power bill after tenants ran a cannabis grow-house from his property. The power bill was a whopping $85,000. The report suggested crime gangs are most likely to target private landlords and will often provide a large upfront […]