In December 2013, Lina and her husband Nick met with us because they felt that although they didn’t have a lot of money, they wanted to understand the position they were in and their options for their future.
Understanding their financial situation was even more pertinent because Nick was recovering from a home injury, which resulted in many, many months of rehabilitation and an initial prognosis that he was unlikely to return to work.
For Lina and Nick, they had to make every dollar count so they questioned whether Nick should maintain his existing personal insurances. After understanding their situation, we encouraged Nick to keep the insurances despite the relatively high premiums.
Thank goodness he did.
Nick eventually returned to work however given the nature of his injuries, he was only able to work causally for a total of 39 days over 3 years and had to cease work altogether in 2016.
We suggested he should make a claim on his Total & Permanent Disability (TPD) Insurances.
After much push back and resistance, we finally encouraged Neil to submit a claim and after much to-ing and fro-ing, the insurance company denied it.
That’s not where it ends.
The insurer said the claim was denied due to technical reasons around the definition of TPD, however we knew there was a possibility this could be resolved. We set to challenge the definition based on the facts of Nick's situation, and our persistence paid off.
The claim was eventually accepted and in one phone, advising Nick the money he deserved would be paid (and backdated to the original amount) we changed both their lives.
The moral of this story is that by Nick trusting us as his nagging financial adviser, he and Lina now can now enjoy the financial compensation they were fully entitled to as a result of continuing to pay their insurance premiums, even when they didn't want to.
Our nagging paid off! And we (Nick, Lina and our entire team) couldn’t be happier.