The one about... Insurance

Tamsin speaks to Dave Child from Sale Insurance Services about all things insurance. If you have never researched insurance before, it can be a minefield. Dave gives some hints and tips about how to ensure you are properly protected and will be able to claim when you need to. He will also discuss some common pitfalls.

Dave Child:
MD of Sale Insurance Services est. 2003

One of the UK’s leading non-standard insurance brokers with Underwriting authority to price and issue Property Insurance with Ageas. Commercial risks with Faraday (Lloyd’s of London) and Motor risks with 1st Underwriting (USA)

Winners of the Insurance Times – Specialist Risk Broker of the year 2012.   Despite having extensive knowledge of the non-standard market we hold many standard individuals and business owners looking to cover their homes, cars, travel policies etcetera. We are a high street broker trading nationally and have many walk-ins or did have prior to the pandemic. Despite the problems Covid has brought us over the last 12 months our growth has continued and have added two further employees to help maintain our high levels of service. Anyone who would like to chat through their current situation should contact me on the number below.

David Child
Managing Director
www.saleinsurance.co.uk
01619696040 - 07971551735

---

Tamsin is a Chartered Financial Planer with over 20 years experience. She works with couples and individuals who are at the end of a relationship and want agree how to divide their assets FAIRLY without a fight.

You can contact Tamsin at tamsin@smartdivorce.co.uk or arrange a free initial meeting using https://calendly.com/tamsin-caine/15min. She is also part of the team running Facebook group Separation, Divorce and Dissolution UK (https://www.facebook.com/groups/469020344490906)

Transcript

(The transcript has been created by an AI, apologies for any mistakes)

Tamsin Caine 0:06
Hello, and welcome to the smart divorce podcast. I'm Tamsin Caine and I will be your host. In series three, we will be speaking to a number of experts and professionals in the divorce arena, and answering the questions that we get asked most often. If you've got a question and you don't think we've answered it yet, please do get in touch, you can email me at Tamsin at smart divorce.co.uk. Now over to our guests. Hello, and welcome to the smart divorce podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today by Dave child. Dave is a specialist insurance broker. And we're going to talk today about getting insurance for the first time. So if you have been delegating this job of doing the searches, to your soon to be x, hopefully listening to today's podcast will help you to know what you're looking for, and know what you're absolutely not looking for. And if you're in a sticky position, which don't fall explain to us much more about very shortly. Hopefully, you'll find somebody who can help you out. So I'm gonna let Dave introduce himself properly. Thank you for joining me today. It's a real pleasure to get to speak to you about this because you know, I've been trying to do it for a little while now, haven't we?

Dave Child 1:33
We have Tamsin! Hi, everybody. Dave Child. I'm the managing director of sale Insurance Services. si s we are on wash. We're out in sale. We're a high street broker, but we trade nationally. Most of our clients are online. So we pick them up from all over the UK.

Tamsin Caine 1:52
That's excellent. Cuz so do we. And this, this podcast does even reach the US. So yeah, all over the place. So tell us a little bit about your specialism to begin with and then we'll move on to the types of insurance that that you couldn't look at.

Dave Child 2:14
Okay, well, the three areas that we specialise in an insurance is a big world. A lot of your listeners today will be perhaps looking at insurance for the first time never insure the home or contents or the car. There's three areas that we specialise in it not so much in the products itself, because we do all sorts of products from travel to liability to casualty to to property. But the three areas we deal with, which is the actual individuals themselves, people who have undisclosed or non non unspent convictions, people with adverse financial history, which would incorporate people with debt relief orders, IPAs bankruptcies, which there are an awful lot of looking at what's happening in the near future with COVID. And employment could even get even more, potentially larger. And the Evergreen market of people with previously cancelled policies, avoided policies, because the way insurance companies were because it's probably around about 4 billion of insurance fraud out there. And that's that's, that's known insurance fraud is about another 2 billion of non disclosed thought on insurance fraud, insurance, spending millions on data enrichment, which, which to me means that if, if one of your listeners defaults on their utility bill, for whatever reason, that information, the utility bill will be selling to the likes of the ASX and all the competent jurors and others around. Exactly, not just utilities. There's so many, there's so many companies out there selling your information, insurance claims are buying it up. And the reason why they're doing that is because they in the normal market where we don't really exist in the normal market. When you go online to buy or insurance. They don't they can't afford to have too many human beings involved in the process because it's too big and it's too expensive. So they use algorithms to work out what your premium should be. So these algorithms are set to the information that they're buying and that they have an understanding of. So if you have had, say a default on a gas bill, and the insurer decides that that person now is a slightly different type of person, maybe someone that we don't really want because of their First financial history, they'll set their algorithms to even not, quote unquote, higher. That's That's the difference.

Tamsin Caine 5:11
Wow, interesting.

Dave Child 5:14
The, but it gets even more complex the low we see a lot of people with those main two issues, the other one, we should avoid the policies even even bigger because because the insurance companies know pretty much all about you. Because all your information is there either to buy or to know anyway. The when an insurance cut, when you take out an insurance policy, you will be given a statement of facts, or you'll be presented with a proposal for actually contracts of insurance between you, the individual and the insurance company. Now, that information has to be correct. So a lot of the time you're going to be answering questions. Rather, the insurance company can be asking you questions that they actually know the answers to, you know, it's a bit like mom, when you were a kid, you know, she knows where you've been, she just wants to know if you get a lie about it. So insurance companies will ask you the questions about your past and what you say some What's that? And where do you live? You know, that can trip people up you know, you get guys have got living in a mid terrace that say that their cars parked in the driveway? Well, the insurance coming? No, it isn't because you live in, you know, you live in a mid terrace. So what happens is if you choose to falsely answer the questions, well, that gives the insurance company the ability to do is to deny, or repudiate liability on any claim that you present to them. And it's a massive growing area is huge. So I'll give you I'll give you I'll give you an example. So we have a lady with a lady came through a few years ago was it's just this is just an ideal story for you. But there's so many different types of situations. Sheila lady just came came in sort of thing, she came down one morning kitchens and washing water. There's been a leak, knee jerk reaction, she found her insurance company. And the insurance can we say just found a plumber 300 pounds later, she's back on the phone to the insurance to cancel the claim to stop the claim. She doesn't want to claim policy access, you know that the amount is small. So therefore there's no point pursuing a claim. What the insurance company should tell that late is that now that she's reported that incidence to them, that incident is is put on to what's known as the cue database declaimed in the writing exchange database, that database is, is used by all the coinsurance and they share the information. Okay, bit like the guy has been kicked out of the pub, the landlord's gonna ring up all the other landlords and say, Look, he might visit you, you don't want to see this guy. So they all know about it. So what she'd done, she put the phone down, and she thinks that's the end of it. So she's not been advised properly. So she's I don't know who the insurer but it was a direct insurer. She's not speaking to a broker. So here to later she's, she's gone with another insurance company now, because a serious claim she puts the claim through and the insurance company repudiating liability dated, they denied the claim, on the grounds that she's made it on disclosure of a previous incident. And she said, Well, yeah, there was, there was an incident A while ago, but I didn't make a claim. And it's the way that the insurance companies fail the question, you think you're reading the question, you think you're reading it, but you're not you see the word claim? So has anybody living with you or you suffered any losses or incidents in the last five years or claims? Well, she's putting her or she should have hoped? Yeah, because there was an incident. And that's an example of how insurance companies are protecting themselves exactly protecting themselves and give them the ability to say no, we're not paying you out. So so she ends up our door. Now she would she's not what I would exactly describe as a non standard client. But she is now because she's dragging this around the market on like a claim and unlike a conviction or a bankruptcy, these things tend to become spent after a period of time. But a refusal or avoided policy is never spent. She's now disclosing that to all the for everything for the rest of the days. So we were able to, you know, sought her out, given a policy that was, you know, fit for purpose, everything else, all the disclosure base, as you can see on the form, excuse me, she can see on the phone, she's disclosed it. So she knows she saved from everything, but If you weren't what we now need to do, which is in a way, sort of compounding misery a little further is that we now need to explain to the when she comes to renew a car insurance next on the car insurance proposal, as it is on a business proposal or a property proposal form. The question is, have you ever the policy voided or cancelled by a previous insurer? Well, yeah, but she would have put no because she's, she's filling out a motor insurance for. But the question is, have you ever had ever had a policy a policy? Not for most of policy, not home insurance policy? So again, if she answers No, and she's involved in an accident, or a car stolen, the insurance company can now have the ability to say I'm sorry, but we're not going to pay? Well, because you made a non disclosure of the fact that you should have told us that you had a previous policy avoided, because in the insurance world, if you go back to 1600s, when insurance was invented in the coffee shop called Lloyd's, London, they ever since then, last few 100 years, the insurance, and today Starbucks mentality that you have the physical hazard, which would be perhaps, your car, your home, or your business, then you've got the moral hazard, which is you, and Bill, look at the moral hazard. And if they think that you've had a policy avoided, you know, outside the customer, you've had a policy that a criminal conviction, for whatever reason, you know, Coca Cola customer, or you've had a definitely folder or events into a bankruptcy hit hard times, you know, outside the customer. So this is how this is what the insurers are doing. I can sort of single point because, again, attacks for fraud all day long, for millions and billions of pounds every year. But what's happening is it isn't. It's not that the proper corporate Serbian call out here is the low hanging fruit, the smaller guys, the nice news, who have never really done anything wrong, but just haven't read the question, right. And this is, this is the reason why I would always guard against going directly to an insurer, even though it's going to be cheaper, is cheaper, for a very good reason. They don't want you to have the advice, impartial advice, independence advice of someone like us, who can then explain to you why you shouldn't be speaking to your insurance company about this incident. Like every every policy says you must, within a certain period of time, notify your insurance company of a claim. We actually say No, don't do that. We're gonna actually bring your policy condition so No, don't do that. Because they'll hold it against you.

Tamsin Caine 12:45
Yeah, sure.

Dave Child 12:46
Wow, dig down is how big down this rabbit hole? Do you want to go? Because it's a it's a nightmare. And people don't know, honestly, is this this is the world that we live in. And and there's so many people are affected one way or the other. But it's because of course, it's the household as well. You know, if you've got a guy who's got a condition for whatever, and he's gone back to live with his mom and dad, his mom and dad now to tell their insurer what's what's that he's living there. So this this, there's millions of things I could tell you, which will probably I'll have time for But anyway, there you go. That's, that's a synopsis.

Tamsin Caine 13:26
We're best, we're best probably not have too many more scary stories. So turning this around on its head. And I'm, I'm going to go out and look for insurance never done this in my life before. And let's start with home insurance. Because you may have talked about home insurance before and you frightened the living daylights out of me on this one. So, home insurance, my starting point, and you put me very right on this is is always these comparison sites. But there's a reason why we might not want to do that isn't there so go tell me where we should start with home insurance.

Dave Child 14:10
With home insurance. If you go if you own the property, if you own the home, or if you have a legal financial interest in the home, then your your level, you got to insure it. Okay. So, what's again, what's important is that, that you get the figures, right? And 70% of people in the UK that make a claim under insured because they've not been advised properly. Again, you know, for whatever, for whatever reason, an insurance company is not going to give you advice. So if you're going to insure a property, what we would recommend that you do is you go to the Rick sac, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, where you can complete a very quick four or five question about you, your postcode, your property and they will tell tell you, it will give you a good indication of what the rebuild some insurance should be. So it's not we house is worth, no one's really interested in what your house is worth is what is going to cost the insurance company to rebuild your home. And in the event of a claim, the guy who's clapboard will come down, and he would assess what he would think is the rebuild cost under a catastrophe situation where you've got a gas explosion, so it's going to include things like debris removal, 1015 grand depending on the size, douse architect fees, lawyer fees, planning fees. So we always advise our clients to add around about 30,000 or so to the cost of the to rebuild Sunday use in case if you got a three bedroom semi detached, you're probably going to be somewhere in this standard brick bill, you're going to be somewhere around 250, maybe 275, we'd always say add a little bit more to that. Just to give you that cushion. Buildings insurance is cheap, not expensive, you know, it's our 1000. So even if you say Well, I'll tell you what 30,000 is what it is, it's maybe going to cost you another 30 quid. So that's, that's, that'll be a good start. It's just it's Ganey, right. I mean, just speaking to just speaking to a broker, whether you use that broker or not, you know, if someone was to ring us up, we would pretty much go through this. And we would give them the advice they need, whoever they're going to be, and customer or not, if they want to go off and get it cheaper people do that's their prerogative when going direct to insurance company, but there's so many hidden minds, it's, sometimes you have to work out, whether there's a value to it or not, it was going to come to car insurance, car insurance is a great one, because you will probably find something that a lot of your listeners, perhaps it was always one of them was the person who insured the car. Therefore the no claims bonus is in their name. Therefore, the person that you may be dealing with has now legally got zero, no claims bonus. So again, if you if you're dealing with the right person, that sort of information, you can be as long as we, as long as we can get a copy of the last shedule, it showed that that person's name was on there as a driver. And that there's been no claims and they've been there for a few years, we'll give that 65% maximum no claims discount as a starter discount. So that's, that's something that that's worth knowing about. That it's not the end of the world if the policy was in his name, you know, there are ways of getting that equivalent discount to set you up again, on your own car. Show. It's a big one. It's one that we see all the time.

Tamsin Caine 17:58
Yeah, I'm sure. just jumping back home insurance for a second. I I see all the time when I'm looking for my own home insurance, these unlimited rebuild cost. Figure so you don't have to put anything yourself. It says it's unlimited. I am massively sceptical about this. And am I right to be massively sceptical? Are our motto my cynical side?

Dave Child 18:31
No, no, he writes me cynical. So it's good to question it. But I would say no, if you've got someone who's got the headache of thinking, well, how am I how am I going to? How am I going to work? How am I going to calculate the rebuild So okay, with with us, because we're dealing with people who can't access the market because of their various issues. We like to get the songs insured, right? If you're Trump's got no previous history of anything that needs to be disclosed that in your in the open market, get a quote from anybody, what tends to happen is you would, you know, put a finger up say welcome, I'm going to put the building some insured at say 200,000. And you put the toilet seat brother in concert is going to push 30 40,000 pounds of work. Excuse me, by the time you've got your quote through insurer report up to a million pounds, which is great, because you know that in the event of something going wrong, I can't be under insured now. So that's actually not a bad thing, because it's probably a good thing. You know, and again, sometimes some of them do on concepts as well. You may ask for 30,000 what they'll give you say, 75,000. You know this, we have to do that. Legal general do that have even do that. That's a really good thing to have to Alicia, you know that. Nothing can go wrong.

Tamsin Caine 19:54
So well, that talked to me a bit about accesses and because do seem quite a both on home insurance and car insurance, they seem quite broad. And if if my thinking is the last thing I'm going to do is claim on my insurance because I know it's going to put my insurance up. Should I be thinking, well, I might as well have a high access. Well, what should how do we deal with this?

Dave Child 20:24
Well, that's like the same question as you speaking to somebody about the financial situation, and they're, how risk averse they are. So you get, so if you ask me what kind of an access you would prepare to stand, I would probably go reasonably high. Because if if a damaged last thing I want to do is claimed on an insurance policy, because once you start claiming for it on an insurance policy to premiums are going to start going up. Having said that, if you we had a penthouse in Essex recently that suffered smoke damage, we had to move the family out a hotel, that at the end of the day, it was it was a six figure sum. But when their policy came up for renewal, the premium was pretty much the same as last year, which we underwrite ourselves. However, the person who's claimed three or four times during the year for 800 600 400 1200. That's the claims frequency insurance companies don't like anybody can suffer smoke damage, anybody can suffer a break, you know, these so. So what I tend to do is think is, you know, I'll think of a song, maybe 100,000 pounds, anything less than that, I'm going to I'm going to deal with itself. So if a pregnancy the something that's a TV, I'm going to, I'm going to sort that out, we're not going to clean through so I would go for a 750 access, he may think you may find somebody who perhaps maybe either can't afford it or don't fancy doing that, in which goes key, this key, the access standard most accesses these days, have a compulsory starting point of 100, you're not going to get a policy that doesn't have an access most of them do. But again, is how how risk averse you are to that?

Tamsin Caine 22:11
Okay, guys, that's good to know. So I'm newly divorced, I'm not but let's think I am. And I need to probably looking for a new car potentially, an A might have got to insure my house for the first time. Where do I start? Let's assume that I am not in one of those categories that you talked about, because I know if we are going to bring Dave up. But if we're not, where do we start?

Dave Child 22:47
If you computer savvy, there's no harm in going on to any of the aggregate sites like mini supermarket or confused calm. Because at the end of the day, you know, they are in effect, just an online broker where we were her 3d Tinder broker, if you like, we're real, you know, you can touch us, we're on the high street who actually come into our office. And whereas, you know, with the with the confused coms, so they're, they're an aggregator with, say, 20 insurance companies on there, but they're gonna make their prices generally speaking cheaper, then maybe the broker market because they want you to go direct see, you're only going to get their advice, which is never advice, you're only ever going to get what they want you to know. Okay? So but if you confuse the survey, and you know, you, you're okay, you can go on there, you can put all your information in correctly, and get a price. And if you feel confident that you have answered the information correctly, and you've got your songs insured, right, then there's no, there's no harm and that the prices is fantastic. And it's with a really good company, or you've heard of them or whatever. There's no harm in clicking, let's go one, you know, and, you know, because you, you've, you've no, there's no reason not to the only time I mean, people, people think of insurance maybe, you know, for half an hour, once a year. But people are people are making a claim or thinking insurance every 10 minutes until that claim is resolved. And if you've gone on an aggregate site, and you have or, or you've gone direct loss dispenser or Tesco or dartlang, you know, issue versus that. And you've got no one's holding on. So peace. I mean, it all depends. For some, somebody who what I would advise anybody listening is to do Both markets, the online market and speak to a broker, speak to a broker that you've heard of, maybe that's got a good reputation, ring them up and ask them for a quote. And then you then you can ask them questions, you can interrogate the information, you know, and then you can, then you can decide, you know, is it worth the extra 3040 quid that this policy is more expensive, or I've got the, the metaphoric parser could kick during that 12 months if something goes wrong. I think the value to that, personally, but most people don't understand that value until they've suffered the claim. You have to, you have to drink better to understand better, you know, you don't know. And so you've actually, in that situation,

Tamsin Caine 25:50
we'll probably get into towards the end of that chat now. And I just wondered if you have any tips for our listeners to leave us with today.

Dave Child 26:00
Definitely the one about the no claims bonus, if if you're if you're going through this process now, with you, Tamsin or, or whatever, and the these documents are available, get onto it now, or, or speaks through. Again, sometimes if you are not the policyholder, it's difficult to speak to the broker or the insurer because on the GDPR rules, you can't, they can't give you the information, even if you named on the policy card. So just find that information out, take a copy of the document, whilst it might still be in a household. Because that can be the difference between that can save literally hundreds upon hundreds of pounds on insuring your car in your own name. That would be a big one. The the tip I would say is, you know, it cost nothing to speak to a broker at inception. So, you know, it's like, if I was to sell a house or buy a house, you know, you can do this yourself online. But there's also a value to an estate agent. So you would probably if I've never paid out if you to buy and sell the house, you would possibly try both sides, you probably speak to these days and find out you need to know, you know, that's what Therefore, I think the max sound like you're using the the agent or using the broker. But in the day, that's where they're to be used in that respect. It's up to us to decide sorts of us to sell you the policy, so as to educate. I always tell my staff, you need to educate policy policyholder you need to educate the customer. And, you know, I'd like to think that the people that we speak to learn more in 10 minutes about insurance, now the insurance works, then sometimes the lifetime when people buy insurance, not try blog, smoke me on ask them, I'm just I just genuinely think that if you if you're educating the customer, then they if the price is within reach, you know, if the price is about right, then, you know, the probably thing that I feel comfortable, because this is what most of our people say feel comfortable with.

Tamsin Caine 28:08
Sure, absolutely. And I can absolutely guarantee you that 10 minutes with you learned about insurance taught me more than and I've been insuring cars and homes for a really long time. taught me a huge amount. So I think that's it. That's excellent advice. Dave, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm sure everyone listening will have taken a huge back away from that. And hopefully, we'll know exactly what they need to put on their forms. But if at any point they need your help and advice, your details will be in the show notes. And they can just drop you an email or give you a call and I'm sure you'll be happy to help out. So thank you very much for your time. very welcome. Good speech it sounds I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you did, please do think about writing us a review or giving us a lovely five star rating on iTunes, if that's where you're listening. hope you'll join us again next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai