LAHORE: Some insurance companies are refuting insurance claims on the pretext that the insured had made fraudulent declaration for purchasing a policy on non-medical basis.
It may be noted that the non-medical life insurance assumes no medical test opposed to a traditional policy where medical tests are required (blood test, blood pressure etc.) and are executed while relying upon the declaration, which the insured persons makes at the time of making of the contract of insurance.
The sources said the insurance companies challenge such declarations as wrong and fraudulent on the basis of prescriptions dug out by their inquiry officers from the relatives of insured ones after their deaths.
Most of such prescriptions suggest that the deceased was not only an addict but he was also under treatment of the doctor issuing the prescription.
The inquiry officers obtain such prescriptions from the close relatives of the deceased, who hand over such prescriptions out of their jealousy against the nominees.
However, the situation becomes tricky when the death certificate shows that the deceased had suffered natural death and the appellate forums require from the insurance companies to prove fraud and misrepresentation in this respect.
According to the sources, the insurance companies fail to produce both their inquiry officers as well as doctors as witnesses in most of the cases.
Similarly, no one from the relatives of deceased appear before the appellate forums once the nominees approach them for justice.
The insurance law experts are of the view that no prescriptions could be presented in evidence without the proof of signatures and handwriting of the person alleged to have signed or written the instrument.
In such cases, they said, an adverse presumption is withdrawn against the party which withholds the best evidence.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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