The role of the financial planner…
Have been busy with a death claim on a retirement annuity and have managed to get an extra 50% added to the payout value…read on for the details that once again highlight the value that a financial planner can add to a client’s portfolio.
About a month before our client died we sat with him and his wife to work through all his insurances (he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer). We did not do a lot of his old policies but managed to get a printout on his policies from the insurance company which showed that there was a death value of R233000 on one of the RA’s (the fund value was less as it still had a few years to run).
After his death we submitted the claim on behalf of his wife and received a recognition of transfer for an amount of R164000. We queried this with the company and were given the usual nonsense about the actuaries having calculated the values etc. We were not happy with this an insisted on a detailed explanation for the discrepancy in the values (this was in the form of at least 5 phone calls as well as 3 written requests).
Good news is that we have just received a revised recognition of transfer with a new amount of R247000 – that’s 50% more than the first one!
Still no explanation of how the value was calculated and no apology. I think we will take the money and run and then follow up later with a further request for a detailed explanation.
Now, imagine that this was a direct client with no advisor fighting for her – the insurance company concerned would probably just pocketed the extra money and the client would have been none the wiser!
