iProtect assure Income Protection Insurance clients are covered for Swine Flu
Specialist provider of lifestyle insurance and income payment protection insurance products, iProtectinsurance.com have today not only assured their existing customers that they are covered for swine flu and it's after effects, but have also issued a rallying cry to those worried about whether they are covered or not, to switch any ASU policy today at no cost and with no exclusion penalties - you might even save a lot of money!
Spokesman for the company Dennis Haggerty said
"At iprotect we have always refused to sell Unemployment insurance without it being combined with Accident and Sickness cover as well. This is because our statistics show some of the most expensive and long running claims are for sickness. It is really the only way to be fair to customers to ensure they are covered in of work for any form of involuntary unemployment, not just redundancy.
Despite the recession and the huge increase in unemployment, still some 40% of the claims we receive are for Accident and Sickness related absence from work. Some of our past claimants have been so unwell they could not work for close to a year. The Swine Flue outbreak is a reminder to us all why it is important to have Accident Sickness and Unemployment cover, Further, if people become infected and potentially seriously debilitated by damage to their lungs and internal organs, quite possibly they could be many months off of work.
Modern medical science may avoid deaths in the UK, but if the strain mutates and prevents its victims returning to work, it is some comfort to know that at least the bills will be paid and benefits paid under their iprotect policy prevent their family finances spiraling out of control."
InsuranceBlogger has had a good look at the iProtect website. It's very easy to use particularly if you are looking to switch or combine covers or policies. The ratres are some of the most competitive on the market and their lifestyle insurance offers exceptional cover at very cheap rates.
Doomsday UK – Swine fever pandemic ravages British Economy
Within days of the closure of the last schools, the final tube train stopped signalling the immediate closure of the UK’s public transport network for the foreseeable future. Snakes of lorry convoys with armed police motorcycle outriders have been seen moving around the country’s motorways, ensuring vital supplies are getting delivered. The halt of Petrol (Gasoline) sales has prevented the movement of most private individuals. What’s vital? If the newspaper shop on the corner doesn’t get any cigarettes in soon he’ll probably get burnt out! Most businesses have been shut for over a month now under local community orders. Around the country local authority disaster action plans are in full swing and restrictions of movement of goods and people, are in place. Rioting is reported in some urban centres up and down the country by the major British TV networks, although the coverage is poor with outside broadcasts rare. Rubbish piling up in the streets and rats are not helping the problem, as victims of swine fever as it is now known succumb to other diseases. Everyone calls it Swine Fever since the H1N1 swine influenza virus mutated into the deadly strain. Bodies are going uncollected and unburied as the number of fatalities rises. The most up to date information can be found on remote UK Internet TV stations such as YouTube or Ustream. It looks well bad in India………Even worse in Cornwall...
No seriously we really do think it just media hype! Although a major viral crisis would damge the UK economy. Uncertainty and fear have been jamming the enquiry lines of call centres of UK insurance companies and brokers, up and down the country this week, following the sporadic outbursts of Swine Flu, influenza variant strain H1N1, associated with travellers returning home after vacation in Mexico. Unlike the questions regarding travel insurance which have been covered extensively in the national press, it appears the UK public are more concerned about their individual personal covers, should Swine Flu become pandemic. We asked some of the UK’s leading Insurance Business characters for their thougfhts on how Swine flu in the UK, was going to affect their insurance products and claims.
Hayden Powers, Customer Services Manager at Burgesses Ltd the UK’s largest online supplier of independent income protection insurance and mortgage protection insurance for Sickness and ASU products http://www.burgesses.com explained, “The majority of sickness insurance protection products sold by online independent providers such as ourselves in the UK, cover Flu and it’s associated sickness, and we can assure all our clients and direct customers that they are covered ‘back to day one’ of a period of sickness caused by swine flu. It is important that a sickness insurance policy includes the back to day one cover, as most income insurance and mortgage payment protection policies for sickness have a thirty day excess period before you can claim. If your swine flu sickness period only lasts three weeks and you have a thirty day excess period with no back to day one of your sickness cover, then you will not be able to claim.”
Robin Rankin of UK Commercial Ltd http://www.uk-commercial-insurance.com the online UK Commercial Insurance broker network, confirms that many small business owners are very concerned about the effects of swine flu on their business. He said, “They are concerned about the interruption to their business that widespread Swine Flu might bring. We have had enquiries as diverse as from freight forwarder insurance customers that do business in Mexico with imported goods, through to clients who have Keyman insurance who are concerned about business continuity if these key players fall victim to the flu. However most enquiries have been from small businessmen concerned about additional pressures on their already struggling businesses that swine flu might bring, in particular business insurance coverage under the contingency sections of business interruption. A major problem will arise if companies are forced to close due to a swine flu pandemic, and the nature of the risk becomes fundamental. In this scenario the UK Government will have to step in to rescue falling businesses.”
Dave Healey underwriting expert at online specialist car insurance comparison site http://www.car-insurance.tv warns of the dangers of driving with swine flu. He said, “We are warning our clients against driving if they are suffering the effects of flu or on medication prescribed due to having contracted swine flu. Aside from any legal obligations, persons doing so are at a much higher risk of having an accident”
It’s apparent that the UK insurance industry is bracing itself against the Swine flu outbreak as the situation worsens, but it is as yet unclear whether they are in a proper position to deal with a full scale influenza pandemic, as seen in 1918 with Spanish flu.
Good news is that despite all the bad economic news and the credit crunch, productivity is up. There has been a hundred per cent drop in the number of employees calling in sick saying they have the flu!
A lot of questions are being asked in the insurance world this week regarding the impact of the H1N1 virus to insurance claims. With the World Health organisation now classifying the virus at five out of six on the scale of pandemia, it only needs one more country to confirm inter human transmission for it to become the first Flu pandemic since 1968.
So what will be the impact on the Insurance World?
Insuranceblogger doesn't beleive that we are going to see a doomsday viral situation much hyped by films like 28 Days later or Survivors, so the impact on on the life insurance fund will be negligable. In the developed world the largest risk to human life appears to be from the associated pnuemonia, which unless extremely aggressive is unlikely to kill more people than the average seasonal flu.
Like in 1968, the largest impact will be on the loss of business if large sections of the workforce are forced to take a couple of weeks off. It is also possible that businesses will be forced to close by the Government in a bid to stop transmission if there are sporadic outbreaks that can be controlled by quarantine and restrictive movement measures may be imposed by local authorities. If this becomes a fundamental risk, commercial insurance business interruption cover will not be in place. If this situation occurs some sort of Government led compensation fund will need to be set up for the business interruption excess, or we could see more businesses going to the wall! Just what the doctor ordered in the middle of a recession!
On a personal level the millions of us who have personal sickness insurance in the form of ASU or protection products will be keen to know whether they are covered for the H1N1 virus. We spoke to Simon Burgess, the managing director of Burgesses Insurance the UK's leading provider of Sickness and Unemployment Insurance. He assured us that it has been confirmed by all his underwriters that all Burgesses clients are definitely covered in the event of contracting this variant of the flu.
................ Anyone stil out there? ...... hello?
We are constantly reminded that the cost of our car insurance premiums are inflated because of insurance fraud and exacerbated by the number of uninsured drivers on the roads! It is certainly true that in the United Kingdom all car insurance companies are required by law to pay into the Motor Insurance Fund (MIF).
This pool of money was designed to protect and recompense the innocent British public, from damage or injury caused by an increasingly large number of uninsured drivers. and accidents involving untraceable hit and run drivers.
The Motor Insurance fund was set up over sixty years ago, immediately following WW2 when the licensing laws and car insurance regulations were still being formulated and yet many of our modern laws were yet to be put onto the UK statute books.
The war years had seen the number of cars and vehicles in the UK rise exponentially, particularly towards the end of the war after the USA joined in, and for the first time British women were systematically taught to drive in their thousands, and indeed even the Queen, Princess Elizabeth as she was at the time, mucked in with driving vehicles of all shapes and sizes and women drove the domestic war effort.
At the end of the war Britain's roads were beginning to become cluttered and returning troops and foreign bases exacerbated the number of unlicensed cars and drivers on UK roads without car insurance to record levels.
As the number of accidents involving uninsured drivers rose steadily, public outcry forced the government to act and in 1946 a Government 'Quango' called the Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) was established to oversee the whole operation of public compensation for damage, where no car insurance covered the costs.
The MID is to this day funded by a proportion of every policy sold, and to date has paid out over £2 billion in total. The MID have calculated that the cost to each of us when we purchase car insurance is an additional £15 to £30 per policy to cover uninsured drivers, which amounts to more than £200 million every year.
Furthermore, recent statistics from the Bureau indicate the problem of driving without car insurance has not declined over the intervening years since its foundation, and show that the UK continues to have a very poor record, with one in every twenty cars on the road being driven without proper car insurance cover.
Breaking down the statistics further, reveals that the amount of damage caused by drivers without car insurance each year far exceeds the amount paid out in claims every year through the risk fund.
It is often difficult to receive full compensation even if you have identified the uninsured driver, who may well have been prosecuted by the police, and you make a claim through the MIB.
A satisfied claim, that is those claims that are paid out, usually only occur when a particular claim has run the full course of the law and a judgement handed down.
In a case of a hit and run driver without car insurance who is unidentified, the MIB does not pay all legal costs, which can quickly run into thousands, but merely makes a contribution with a deduction to cover the balance of legal costs and expenses.
Thus the hidden costs and misery caused by the actions of those who choose to drive without car insurance is far greater than the official statistics of two hundred million pounds every year.
It is with these figures in mind that the MIB became the centralised point of a new database, the Motor Insurance Database, created at the turn of the century. The database is updated daily with details of every person and their car, who buys a car insurance policy. This information is now immediately available to all police forces throughout the Country, who through automatic number plate recognition systems, can instantly send a car registration number to the MID.
This allows the system to immediately indicate to a police office in the field, cars that are being driven and the driver has valid car insurance in force.
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