General Claims Procedures

To complement the careful planning in establishing your Insurance Programme, it is obviously necessary that in the event of an incident which will or may give rise to a claim, a procedure must be adopted for the proper and expeditious conduct of the claim.

By carefully following this procedure, the impact on your business operations will be minimised.

There are a number of steps which must be taken immediately:

• Report the incident to us by telephone, facsimile or email, wherever practicable, within 24 hours of the incident occurring.
• Regardless of whether or not the claim has been reported or a loss adjuster appointed, you must immediately do whatever is necessary to prevent further loss of life, injury or loss of or damage to property. For example:
  • Call the fire brigade, ambulance, police or other appropriate emergency service.
  • If during business hours, ensure the evacuation, if necessary of staff, customers and neighbours.
• Complete all claims documentation as soon as practicable (ensuring your ABN No. and Input Tax Credit entitlement are included) and forward to us with any supporting documents.
• Whatever the circumstances of the incident, DO NOT ADMIT LIABILITY EVEN IF YOU THINK YOUR ARE AT FAULT. Your insurer is entitled to deny a claim or pay a reduced amount if statements made by you or your employees prejudice the insurer’s position.

It is impossible to give guidelines for procedures to follow in every claim, simply because of the nature of accidents:

• they cannot be predicted.
• they do not follow set patterns.

However, the following general procedures for the Professional Indemnity, Directors’ and Officers’ Liability and Public and Products Liability classes of insurance can be relied upon to cover most circumstances. For any other claim involving other classes of insurance, please contact us without delay.