Recently had a call from the executive of an adviser association that said they had been reading about the definition of replacement business and thought it was well worth pursuing. They shared a story about one insurance company that had sought to define replacement business as, essentially, '...if any money had been spent by anyone in an extended family, and they stopped paying, any insurance bought by another was deemed replacement business'. What harm this definition would prevent is not clear. Surely you cannot suffer a loss of benefits if you were never entitled to receive them?
Which is rather ironic given that insurers are progressively removing the requirement to provide BRA forms for replacement and never actually take any notice of what is written on them by the adviser.
In this case, a loosely intermingled document that provides the insurer wriggle room if they ever wanted to legally pursue avenues to avoid a claim.
Any insurer doing so is likely to find themselves facing a public and adviser backlash that would put their business at risk.
Thus ensuring that dumb questions and terms in policies like this are never implemented.
Posted by: J-P Hale | August 02, 2018 at 06:56 AM