Your Duty of Disclosure

Before you enter into a contract of general insurance and up until the commencement of the insurance, you have a duty, under the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 to either provide answers to questions or disclose specific information to the underwriter. You have the same duty before you renew, extend, vary or reinstate an insurance contract.

For Consumer Insurance Contracts, (Consumer Insurance Contracts are defined as insurance that is obtained wholly or predominantly for the personal, domestic or household purposes of the insured) your only duty is to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation when answering questions asked of you by the underwriter.

In all other situations you must tell the underwriter about anything that you know or could be reasonably expected to know taking into account the nature and extent of the insurance cover to be provided and the class of persons who would ordinarily be expected to apply for such insurance cover.  You do not need to tell the underwriter anything that reduces the risk of the underwriter, that is of common knowledge;  that the underwriter knows or, in the ordinary course of business, ought to know or that the underwriter has waived your duty to tell them about

 

NON-DISCLOSURE

If you do not tell the underwriter anything you are required to, or in the case of Consumer Insurance Contracts fail to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation, they may cancel your contract or reduce the amount they will pay you if you make a claim, or both. If your failure to tell the underwriter is fraudulent, they may refuse to pay a claim and treat the contract as if it never existed.

 

WHOLESALE BROKER INFORMATION

In some cases we use the services of a Wholesale Broker (insurance intermediary) to access products that are not available to us directly from the insurer. You can identify where we have used an insurance intermediary as the Invoice/schedule will show that the policy is placed via another Insurance Intermediary.  This situation usually arises where the insurance intermediary has developed a specialised product and competitive pricing for risks that are not commonly available directly from most underwriters.  This means we are not dealing with the end insurer directly but via the insurance intermediary.  All insurance intermediaries that we deal with are required to hold an Australian Financial Services Licence and to place all client funds received into a Trust Account and are required to meet the same high standards in the delivery of their services that apply to us. Importantly all claims will be the ultimate responsibility of and paid for by the end underwriter.