Home Insurance Tips For Peace Of Mind

Brits need to follow important home insurance tips when looking to protect their most valuable property. Finding the right cover at the right price is as important to a home buyer as getting a good deal on the purchase of the property. Many home owners learn the hard way that cutting corner on home protection is not a good idea.

Home insurance is vital to providing security and protection for the investment and risk Brits bring to a property purchase. The biggest mistake many Brits make when buying home insurance is cutting corners on premium costs to save a little money. Most lists of home insurance tips begin with making sure to obtain full protection near the top.

Some insurance customers mistakenly believe that insurance protection should cover the current market value of their home. This is not correct. Full insurance cover usually covers a bit more than the current market value of the property. Home insurance is needed to provide for the cost to rebuild or replace damage to the home. Thus, protection should be based on the cost for replacement, including materials and labor. A home that was built using different materials or materials that have increased in cost, would require more money to replace than the existing home cost to build.

Along with providing for replacement of the main building of a property, full cover should also provide protection for out buildings, gardens, or other external property pieces that are important to the property.

The problem for many consumers is that some home insurers, attempting to be helpful, recommend lower cost premium options that save the customer a little money each month, but could potentially cost them thousands of pounds if damage is incurred to the property. A home insurance specialist assists customers by finding protection solutions that provide peace of mind that their full property is protected, while also providing a reasonable cost.

Home insurance should also cover the loss of personal property maintained in the home. Insurers typically ask the customer in an interview for an estimate of the value of personal property. This protection benefit helps cover the personal items that could be lost in a fire, flood, or other disaster.

Other home insurance tips for buyers include finding other customize solutions that might help in a home owner’s particular situation. Many standard insurance plans also provide protection for injury to either residents or guests who might be injured in the home. Especially with homes that have stairs or other potential health hazards, it is important for owners to have protection in the event of liability.

Obtaining adequate home insurance protection is the most important of all home insurance tips. Again, it is more important that a home owner be protected from the potential loss of thousands of pounds from home damage or loss, than it is to save a few pounds each month in insurance premiums by cutting corners. Home insurance is an investment in security and peace of mind. It is an investment in one’s future.



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Merchant Account Provider

Historically credit card processing services were provided by banks that were members of the Visa or Mastercard networks. Typically both banks issued credit cards and process merchants helped them, but over time the industry consolidated. Now, very few banks issue credit cards and the industry is dominated by a few large issuers - Citibank, Washington Mutual, Capital One, MBNA / Bank of America, and Chase. Even fewer banks process credit cards. Banks found that it was not within their skillset to convince every small merchant to accept credit cards, and they began to Outsource the selling of such services to small companies called ISOs (Independent Sales Organizations). They also found that massive scale helped reduce the cost of processing credit cards, so they began to Outsource processing to a few giant processors including TSYS, First Data and MSI.

Now, while some merchants buy their credit card processing services directly from a bank, more Typically they get their credit card processing services from an ISO, which is responsible for selling the service to the merchant, providing technical support, processing the transaction (authorizing it and submitting it to the Visa or Mastercard network), bears the risk of chargeback (s), and sets the price of the services. If the ISO is a small ISO it might Outsource some of those services (for example providing technical support) to a larger ISO. Except for the few very largest ISOs, the ISO outsources the actual processing to a larger company that focuses solely on processing.

While each of the firms discussed above provides merchant accounts and could legitimately be called the merchant account provider, in practice the phrase usually refers to whichever organization has responsibility for maintaining the relationship directly with the merchant.


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Critical Illness Insurance. Insurers Under Fire

Recent press coverage has again lambasted the insurance industry over critical illness insurance. The underlying problem is that a critical illness claim is not as straightforward as, for example, a claim under car or life insurance. With car insurance it's patently clear whether or not you've had an accident - the damage is there to be seen and repaired. And with life insurance it's going to be hard for the insurer to argue that you're not dead!

By their very nature, critical illness claims are far more complicated. The insurers will need to satisfy itself that the claim is valid in three primary areas before it pays out: -

Is the medical diagnosis correct?

Is the diagnosed illness included in the schedule of insured critical illnesses listed within the policy documents?

Did the policyholder fully disclose their state of health and medical history on their original application form?


It's clearly in the policyholder's interest to check that the medical diagnosis is correct - so there's rarely ever any conflict between the policyholder and the insurance company on that issue. It's the other two areas which require validation where conflicts sometimes arise.

With constant research and development in the medical field there can sometimes be some illnesses where validation falls into a grey area – it can be argued that an illness is insured and it can be argued that it isn't. Insurance companies are aware of these problems and they frequently revise the wording on policies in an attempt to clarify the extent of the cover and eliminate scope for dispute. Nevertheless, disputes are relatively common and sparks fly when the policyholder thinks he is insured but the insurer disagrees. This is illustrated by a case that comes before the Courts shortly. Mr Hawkins from Staffordshire is suing Scottish Provident under the terms of his £400,000 critical illness policy. Basically, his medical advisers believe his illness is insured whereas Scottish Providents' medical advisers disagree. If Mr Hawkins wins his case, the press will have a field day and the critical illness insurers will suffer further bad press it can ill afford.

Another summons, filed recently in the High Court, highlights the problem when an insurance company believes that the claimant mislead them on his or her original application form. Our understanding is that if an applicant misleads or leaves out relevant information, this amounts to obtaining insurance cover on false pretences. The High Court summons relates to Thomas Welch from north London who is suing Scottish Provident for £206,800 which includes interest. The problem goes back to 2000 when, a few years after starting his critical illness policy, it was confirmed that Mr Welch had testicular cancer. The insurer refused the claim because of “non-disclosure saying that Mr Welch had not been honest about his smoking habit. He admits that he did smoke earlier in his life but is insistent that he had long since stopped when he applied for the insurance. As such, Mr Welch claims that he did honestly complete the application. We suppose that the case will centre upon whether Mr Welch accurately answered the questions about smoking. Most insurance companies define “a smoker” as a person who has smoked or otherwise taken nicotine products within the previous 5 years. If Mr Welch had smoked during those years, he would have had to answer “yes” to that sort of question and his insurance premium would have been as much as 65% more than he would have been charged as a non-smoker. We speculate that his lawyers may argue that either he did not smoke during the period in question or he omitted the smoking information by simple oversight and that his past smoking was not relevant to his testicular cancer. Interesting issues. We shall follow the case and let you know the outcome.

Mr Hawkins case illustrates the problems that can arise if insurance documents imprecisely define an illness or when the technical diagnosis of an illness leaves scope for medical experts to disagree. Both issues are entirely outside the policyholders control at a most difficult time for them and their families and we can well appreciate their anguish. The long-term answer must lie in improving the medical definitions within the policy. The probability is that this will lead to increasing the technical medical jargon which the man in the street would find difficult to understand - but that must be preferable compared to what Mr Hawkins is going through.

The other court case must stand as a clear reminder to all that insurance applications must always be 100% accurate and completed in good faith. We recognise that this may still leave room for dispute (and Mr Welch's case may be a case in point), but if an applicant fails to accurately complete the forms, they are taking the significant risk that any subsequent claim will be rejected.

Rightly or wrongly, the press have a track record of giving the insurance industry a hard time, casting them as heartless big business. This reinforces the public's impression that insurance companies are not to be trusted and especially it seems, with regard to critical illness insurance. This view is bolstered by the fact that around 20-25% of critical illness claims are rejected (the rejection rate does vary between insurers). This issue is something that insurance companies must get to grips with – it is bad for their clients and bad for the development of their business.

This is a crying shame. 1 in 6 women and 1 in 5 men will be diagnosed with a critical illness before their normal retirement age* and as such, critical illness insurance can greatly protect the finances of those unfortunate enough to be diagnosed.

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Lowongan Quality Assurance

Company: PT Supra Boga Lestari (Ranch Market)
Industry: Retail
Contact Person: HRD
Company Description: The most respected, loved, and trusted thought leader in Indonesia's supermarket industry

Job Title: Entry Level
Job Function: Internal Audit
Job Position: Quality Assurance
Work Location: Jakarta
Education Level: Bachelor's Degree
Major: Food Technology
Work Experience: At least 1 year
Offering Salary: Not specified
Requirements:
- Good Interpersonal Skill

- Mampu bekerja dengan team

- Bersedia melakukan perjalanan keluar kota

- Mampu berbahasa Inggris dengan baik

- Menguasai komputer


Posting Date: 28 October 2008
Closing Date: 11 November 2008


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