A time to review your Insurance cover

The importance of insurance can’t be understated. It is probably as important as keeping to your mortgage repayment terms; having valid and adequate insurance is a necessity that cannot be overemphasised. Not just for your property but a cover for any asset that holds value for you, your family and business.

One in four homes in the U.K do not have insurance cover according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI), despite premium falling to low levels.

I’m not speaking from the context of an Insurance broker of 2 decades only, I’ve been there, a brand new Range Rover, barely 4 weeks old was stolen from my drive in Cockfosters in 2008, what shocked me was the question people asked: “did you insure the car?”. What did you expect, buy a car for 10’s of thousands and not insure it? I was back on the road with the same make and model in less than 8 weeks. That is what insurance does, it restores.

I had earlier in the year 2000 received good value for my crashed Honda Civic, which enabled me to upgrade to a Honda CRV. 

In 2009 a late client’s family benefited from a life cover that wiped out their mortgage and refocused the family to other areas of challenge.

In 2018, our flagship No 10 office in Balfe Street Kings Cross caught fire from a fluke spark from The Institute of Physics building, our next-door neighbour.

On a bright summer day, the office was consumed and devastated within minutes. Although there were areas of contention, the office was restored and enhanced by the insurance payout. 

In 2019, my wife suffered a major health blow, the critical illness cover taken out many years before came in handy.

I have always preached the importance of having Life and critical illness cover and actively encouraged my mortgage clients in that direction. In my most active days as a financial advisor, this won me many awards, laurels and was financially beneficial to the business. However, the drive was the need and importance of an insurance cover, my mantra was “if you died yesterday, would your family be able to maintain the lifestyle” 

There were painful instances, a client had taken out life and critical illness cover but cancelled after about 5 Years of running it unfailingly, the client cancelled the cover due to paucity of funds. I received a notification from the provider which necessitated a discussion with the client, unfortunately by the time I had instructions for the cover to be reinstated, it had gone past the 3 months of grace to keep the cover without going through the process all over again. A month later the client was diagnosed for a terminal illness and died less than 6 months later. If the cover had been in place, it could have helped during the ailment and alleviated the financial situation and grief of the immediate family.

January 2021, I received an alert on the business WhatsApp chat informing me of a fire outbreak in a premises we own but rent out as a storage facility in central London, it was indeed an inferno. I called my assistant to reconfirm we had adequate cover, which was confirmed. I sent a message to the tenant to confirm if all was ok and was shocked to learn that, they had cancelled their insurance cover in February 2019, the moment the effect of CoVid 19 started hitting home. This was a small business that has gone through a most torrid period due to lockdown, to suffer a fire calamity without hope of restitution might be fatal to the existence of the business.

Check that you are adequately covered today, if you require a non-obligatory quote or review, do not hesitate to contact us today.