Celebritity Swine Flu Insurance!

Celebrities are starting to insure themselves for the event they they contract Swine Flu!  Katherine Jenkins has set the trend with a policy that insures her for £1million for losses associated with the contraction of the virus.

It is not uncommon for celebrities to be insured by concert promoters for a number of potential risks, including death, causing concert programmes to be cancelled.  In the case of Michael Jackson, his policy had an exclusion policy for death if blood results showed illegal drugs.

Illnesses are often covered in such contracts but not pandemic illnesses, hence the need for a swine flu clause.

Soldiers Insuring Personal Injury

More soldiers are sorting out their own insurance according to Channel 4 news.  The policies are designed to supplement and payments made by the armed forces compensation scheme which has been criticised and is under current review.

AIG runs the biggest UK scheme known as PAX and insures tens of thousands of servicemen.  There have been significant claims made against some of the compensation schemes.

Soldiers can also insure their personall accident cover across multiple schemes.

Aviva doing well

Shares in Aviva rose over 5% after their latest results were better than expected.  Aviva made £1.68bn an increase on the previous years related performance of £1.51bn.

Despite the profit performance, the divident is being slashed.

Aviva is outperforming many major rivals with these latest stats.

Michael Jacksons Insurance Excluded Drug Use

The insurance policy taken out by Michael Jacksons concert organisers, AEG live, had a clause excluded losses following the possession or taking of illicit drugs.

While the policy would be set to pay out a significant sum to protect the policyholders losses following Michael Jacksons sudden death, if the autopsy results show that illicit drugs were present in Michaels Jacksons blood then the claim will not be valid.

AEG live are unikely to end up out of pocket too much though.  The Jackson estate is to pay AEG live its costs before it retains income from merchandising and Sony are in dicsussion over the distribution of Michaels last rehearsal footage taken shortly before his death.

Unoccupied Property

Many insurance policies for residential and commercial property stipulate that the property has to be occupied for a certain amount of time.  Unoccupied property represents a bigger risk to insurers who are worried about total loss claims such as flood and fire. 

If your property is left uninsured for longer periods of time then you risk invalidating your insurance completely.

This is why there are specailist insurance policies for landlords and european holiday home insurance.  If you need insurance for unoccupied property, make sure you check the terms and conditions of the policy, including any warranties the insurers make.

Money Mails Top Crazy Claims!

Money Mail have assembled a top ten of the UKs craziest insurance claims.  Since we have covered a couple of fraud items this month, it seems appropriate to list these five claims which range from the crazy to the insane!  Click here for their full article.

1. Claimant insisted she burned her bingo winnings!

2. Man makes a genuine claim for a Rolex which ends in a domestic when he finds the present from his partner was a fake!

3. A woman made repeated claims for printing reward flyers for lost dogs, even doctoring the receipts to add value! 

4. An accident claims company submitted the cases of 34 bus passengers to solicitors following an accident.  However, the bus was only a 31 seater and was half full at the time of the accident!  21 claimants subsequently admitted falsifying claims to police.

5. Incredibly a man took roadkill and subsequently claimed on pet insurance policies!

Business Insurance | Tenants Insurance

How much does Insurance Fraud cost?

The ABI have released stats that show that the cost of insurance fraud is the equivalent of £44 for each UK household.

The total insurance fraud bill is estimated as over £5million per day.  The ABI also state that fraud has increased in recent years.  These increases have been seen before as ressessions kick in to the UK economy.

Frauds can be anything from withholding material facts, exagerrated claims,  fictional claims and even organised crime.

HSBC Data Loss £3m Fine!

HSBC have had three parts of their group fined a total of £3million for insufficient data security.  Various parts of the huge banking and financial services group lost data and they were found not to have controlled data with sufficient care.

This high profile case of data security further highlights the risks individuals and organisations face from use of personal data.  In the case of HSBC it was life insurance and other bits of personal data that leaked and whilst no widespread harm occured from the leak, the business has suffered a significant fine for its weaknesses.

Identity theft products are now widely available on the market and data security remains a topical issue in the UK.

ABI Reports on £1.9bn Fraud in UK Insurance!

An ABI report has suggested that there is £5.2m of undetected fraudulent insurance claims made daily in the UK.  This represents a quarter increase on figures released two years previously.

The fraudulent claims referred to range from people not declaring motor convictions on their car insurance policies to completely staged car accidents and home contents claims.

People who subsequently have insurance refused find it very difficult to subsequently reinsure.  Naturally, insurers are particularly concerned with people who have previously tried to defraud them.  However it is possible to find insurance for previously refused policies as well as ex offenders insurance.

One specific form of fraud which the ABI have identified is the claiming on home insurance policies for items accidentally damaged, when the damage was deliberate.

120 small businesses going under each day?

In many economic forecasts and bits of news in the last few months, a figure has been rolled out that 120 small businesses are failing each day. 

The figure was used by the Times back in March and repeated in April.  Other major news organisations, such as the Guardian, have also used the figure and attributed it to the Federation of Small Businesses

It is an astonishing figure and represents a serious threat to the UK small business sector.  Small businesses employ most of the UK workforce and is generally seen as the engine room of the UK economy.

Click here for small business insurance.