DIY fans expected to cause up to £25 million damage this Easter

DIY enthusiasts could cause up to £25million worth of damage in British homes this Easter weekend - one of the most popular periods for taking on home improvements.

Research suggests that a clumsy 16 per cent of people have damaged their homes or their property carrying out a DIY improvement and the industry expects to pay out anything up to £25 million for DIY-related damage this Easter.

A survey of 2,000 householders by Allianz Insurance also found that nearly 30 per cent of people admit they have injured themselves or someone else while carrying out a DIY job. This figure is supported by the fact that an estimated 200,000 DIY enthusiasts turn up at hospital each year.

Worryingly, 55 per cent admitted to starting a DIY job without the correct tools and almost 50 per cent said that they had started a DIY job without really knowing how to do it - including electrical and plumbing jobs.

So if you're looking to start those long-awaited home improvements this weekend - you just mind how you go!

Earthquake could result in 3,250 home insurance claims

The insurance industry is bracing itself fro as many as 3,250 home insurance claims as a result of last week’s earthquake, which reached 5.2 on the Richter Scale.

It estimates that collectively these could run into tens of millions of pounds. However, with one in 20 households without buildings insurance, the bank warns that there will be a number of homeowners who will find themselves having to foot significant repair bills themselves.

Those who think that earthquakes are rare and that it won't happen to them should consider this.

There are more earthquakes in the UK than in any other European country – so there!

Barking Mad

An estimated 1.8 million pet insurance claims are made in the UK against veterinary treatment for cats and dogs every year. A further 18,000 claims are also made for other reasons including when the animal is lost or stolen. However around 75% of uninsured cat and dog owners pay out for an estimated 5.5 million veterinary treatments annually.

According to a supermarket insurance company who shall remain nameless but would be better employed making sure they had enough bread and milk on the shelves of my local one, the most common pet insurance claim is for skin tumours, followed by general poor health where the cat or dog is said to be "just not his/herself".

Sir Tom denies chest hair insurance claim

Apparently Sir Tom Jones has dismissed reports he’s had his legendary chest hair insured for millions.

A tabloid newspaper reported that the singer had approached Lloyd’s of London, who agreed to insure his chest hair for £3.5million.

But a posting on Sir Tom’s official website says the claims are nonsense.

“The story is completely fabricated,” it says. “No such insurance policy exists or has ever been considered. We assume this is just a bit of fun and hope no one takes this kind of ‘reporting’ seriously.”

We thought such an insurance policy would be rare.

But apparently, it's not unusual!

Insurance fraud can be dangerous

Insurance fraud is harder than it looks. Just ask Andreas, who lost his life trying to collect on an amputated limb. Just ask Musa and his son Essa, who hired an arsonist to burn down their Steak Thyme Subs shop so they could collect the insurance money. They promised him a $60,000 a year job, but where he would work once the shop was gone is unknown.

Three times he tried, and three times he failed to destroy the sandwich shop. The neighborhood was up in arms over the apparent "hate crimes" repeatedly being committed against the Jordanian immigrants. Whether it was a Molotov cocktail thrown through the window, or chairs doused with gasoline and set ablaze, the result was the same. Minor damage. This was getting them nowhere fast!

Eventually Musa grew tired of throwing good money after bad. For the fourth arson attempt, only 12 hours after the flaming chairs fizzled, he and his son decided to help out their hired hand. They spread gasoline around their eatery, so that a single match would do the trick.

Tragically, they apparently had more talent for arson than their amateur arsonist. They took a cigarette break. One lit cigarette later, an accidental gas explosion took out one wall, and burned both men over 80% of their bodies. Despite several weeks of hospitalized care, the men died from their injuries.

The inept arsonist faces a far lighter sentence: up to 10 years in prison.

Let that be a lesson to you!

On the fiddle

One in 10 people would exaggerate an insurance claim if they believed they would not get caught and 7% admit to actually committing fraud, says a Norwich Union report.

Insurers often face criticism for using non-disclosure as a scapegoat in order to avoid payouts, but they have also said consumers need to take their share of the blame.

Following a survey commissioned by Norwich Union, the UK insurer said that up to 10% of all insurance claims are thought to be false, which represents a cost of more than £1.6 billion a year.

The research also showed that 75% of British adults believe that dishonesty is rife in today's society, and 46% believe the UK has seen a significant shift in attitudes over the past decade.

Dominic Clayden, director of claims at Norwich Union, said that as much as 60% of all insurance fraud is committed by those who are motivated by a belief that everyone else is at it. But he also said that another reason for fraud was that people were concerned they would not be paid the full value by their insurer.

‘These concerns are in fact entirely misplaced, our priority is to pay genuine claims in full, as quickly as possible,’ Clayden said.

Last year Norwich Union identified and denied 20,000 claims that it deemed were fraudulent, worth approximately £150 million.

Clayden said: ‘Not many people realise that if any part of their claim can be shown to be fraudulent, then the whole claim is potentially invalidated and you risk not receiving any payment at all.

Those crazy insurance claims - again!

A leading Insurance company has sifted through more than 180,000 car insurance claims and released a list of some of the craziest.

They include:

Silly Moo – You expect to see a few animals on a trip to the countryside but finding one on top of her car certainly took Mrs R by surprise. After crashing through a fence and making a rather large dent in the bonnet, the bull and driver were lucky to escape with minor bumps – the car was not!

The Big Sleep – Mr L found his trip to Holy Island in Northumberland so relaxing that as he sat in his camper van admiring the view, he nodded off. However, he woke up to find he’d parked on the causeway and the tide had come in. Whilst he was safely rescued by boat, his van sank without trace.

Upsetting the Applecart – A shocked Mr A was taken by surprise when he experienced a rather unusual downpour. It wasn’t rain showering down on his car but apples from a forklift truck

Supermarket Sweep – Flying balls, jumping deer and barking dogs...we thought we had heard them all until Mrs P claimed “several airborne shopping trolleys came flying towards me ruining my bonnet.” The offending trolleys had fallen off a delivery lorry.

All Washed Up – Mr K found himself in deep water on a trip to the car wash. When a brush came loose and scraped down the side of his vehicle he opened the door to press the emergency button. Unfortunately, the machine jammed in the open door, writing off both car and car wash

It just goes to show, you need to ensure you’re covered for all eventualities, however far-fetched they might seem.

A real Christmas story? Or a cheap PR trick?

It doesn't take much to get the old Insurance suits excited.

This week, one of our treasured and traditional insurers = Sainsbury’s (and I thought they were grocers) - issued a warning of an increase in home insurance claims from Boxing Day.

Yep - you read that right. Apparently, during December last year, the average value of home insurance claims received by them was £658.28, but on Boxing Day, this average soars to £2,209.31.

Apparently - according to the head honcho at Sainsbury's (one presumes its the bloke off the bacon counter) - over the Christmas period, we are at a higher risk of being burgled or, if we have our home full of friends and family, the chances of something breaking or being damaged can also increase.

My reaction? So what! What does the grocer wish us to do? Skip Christmas all together?

Maybe he should stick to his in-store bakery and tins of beans.

And leave his cheap attempts at getting in the newspapers to the politicians.

Bah humbug indeed!

Mind how you go now.

I told you to mind how you go!!

With earthquakes that hardly trouble the Richter scale, and just one native poisonous snake, you'd think Britain was the safest country on Earth.

But that didn't stop more than a million of us ending up in accident and emergency last year - sometimes for the most bizarre of reasons.

These included three patients needing treatment after being bitten by a crocodile or alligator in the last year. The luckless trio were among 77 patients bitten by reptiles overall.

In addition, eight Britons got into a pickle with a scorpion, 12 pushed their luck with a venomous spider - and 725 had a nasty encounter with a hornet.

Fifty-five people were seen after suffering 'contact' with venomous snakes or lizards, and 22 came off worse from an encounter with a marine animal or plant.

The latest emergency hospital admissions statistics also revealed that one unidentified patient needed to see a doctor "for an illness resulting from staying too long in a weightless environment".

Another 60 Britons were seen by paramedics after being struck by lightning.

Doctors and nurses treated 4,660 dog bite injuries, with 1,369 of the victims being under 14. DIY enthusiasts also kept medical staff busy. There were 3,435 injuries while using power tools and other household machinery, and there were 452 lawnmower accidents.

Some of the other statistics might confirm suspicions over declining public services.

Amid fears that fortnightly bin collections are fuelling a boom in the numbers of vermin, it is disconcerting to note that 19 people visited a casualty department after being bitten by a rat.

Two of these victims needed to be admitted to hospital.

Equally worrying, 9,000 people were treated for illnesses contracted while in hospital and there were 162 cases of foreign objects being left in the body after surgery or other treatment.

Overall, 1,096,946 Britons were treated by casualty staff during 2006-07.

Not all of them injured themselves in such exotic ways, with more than 86,000 being hurt after "slipping, tripping or stumbling".

There were also 246 shooting victims, and nearly 6,000 people were stabbed, with all but 550 being men. On top of that, there were more than 3,500 cases of people being hit with a blunt instrument.

I told you to mind how you go didn't I?

Now - you take note.

And mind how you go.

Now Santa gets the insurance treatment

There are times when I despair with my industry. Togther with their cohorts the health and safety police, our insurance underwriters have a significant impact on the day to day running of business - and on the day to day running of our own individual lives.

So, it probably should come as no surprise to hear that the Health & Safety/Insurance alliance has now targetted Father Christmas! This report was from today's Daily Telegraph:

They have told one Santa that he must be strapped into a full body harness in case he falls out of his sleigh as it is towed by a Land Rover at the gentle speed of five miles an hour.

Meanwhile, another has been forced to abandon his sleigh altogether, and travel on a rather less magical bus.

Members of the Halesowen and Rowley Regis Rotary Club were told that they would have to raise a four-figure sum to cover the insurance costs of a visit by Father Christmas, until he agreed to belt up.

Barry Wheeler, the president of the West Midlands club, said: "Every year we have made sure Santa gets to go through the town and wave to the children. It just seemed ridiculous, especially because he doesn't actually ride on the sleigh that often.

"He would be more likely to injure himself getting in and out of the sleigh than actually falling out of it."

One of the members of the club, which has been organising visits by Father Christmas for the past 20 years, has now taken the sleigh to be fitted with the harness. This means the club saved £200 on its insurance policy and could still go ahead with the event.

However, members said the tough rules took "the magic out of Christmas".

"We're going to try to make the belt as discreet as possible," said Mr Wheeler. "The sleigh ride through the towns starts in December and starts Christmas off for so many people. It would have been such a shame to see it cancelled."

Kelly Ostler, from the Association of British Insurers which represents about 400 UK insurance companies, said: "This is as much about protecting Santa from other drivers as protecting him from the speed of his own sleigh."

But Father Christmas has not been so lucky in the Northumbrian town of Alnwick. There, a 30-year tradition of visits to the town by Santa and his sleigh have been brought to an abrupt halt by a similar insurance wrangle.

As usual, the organisers - Alnwick Lions Club - planned to mount the sleigh on a district council trailer. But this year the council has ruled that using the trailer would be too dangerous because Santa is not a council employee, so he would not be covered by its insurance.

Instead, he has had to cancel the tour and will have to ride into town by bus to switch on the Christmas lights. Graham Luke, of the Alnwick Lions, told the Northumberland Gazette newspaper: "It is health and safety. We have become Americanised - that's the best way of putting it.

"It is very frustrating because it is a tradition that has been going on for so long."

An Alnwick district council spokesman said: "We always try to help with community projects, but regrettably, this is out of our hands."

Mind how you go now.

Insurance claims Deer - official!

I got a note from a pal in the industry who lives in Swindon and he passed me a copy of a report in his local newspaper which had me scractching my head.

According to the report in This is Wiltshire, warnings are being issued to motorists in the New Year to slow down whilst driving in the New Forest.

The reason?

Deer.

Yep, apparently, head-on collisions with deer are leading to insurance claims of more than £21 million each year across the UK.

Apparently, every year an estimated 75,000 deer are struck by cars in the UK, but Jamie Cordery, the south-east deer liaison officer for the Deer Initiative, said that, despite the high number of deaths, the population of deer in the New Forest is not yet under threat.

Well that got me thinking. And I reached for my calculator. 75,000 claims costing £21m.

That works out at £280 per claim.

For a head-on-collision.

Must be accidents involving Fiat cars then.

Driving your truck? You mind how you go then!!

Or you might suffer the same fate as these two drivers!

Let this be a lesson to you!

One of the issues that has blighted the insurance industry ever since Adam was a lad is that of fraudulent claims. Some classes of insurance, particularly travel insurance and home insurance suffer from a significant number of people trying to claim what is not rightfully theirs. There does seem to be aview that insurance can be treated as some kind of savings plan - there to be drawn upon when times are hard.

And the problem is, of course, that its the honest people who end up paying for the fraud through increased premiums.

That said, I did like this chaps ingenuity.

A bloke from Charlotte, North Carolina purchased a box of 24 rare and very expensive cigars. Wishing to protect his investment then, the man decided to insure the collection.

Against... fire.

Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of fabulous cigars, and having yet to make a single premium payment on the policy, the man decided to make a claim against the insurance company.

In his claim, the man stated that he had lost the cigars in "a series of small fires." The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason: that the man had consumed the cigars in a normal fashion. The man sued, and guess what?

Yep - he won.

In delivering his ruling, the judge stated that the man held a policy from the company in which it was warranted that the cigars were insurable. The company, in the policy, had also guaranteed that it would insure the cigars against fire, without defining what it considered to be "unacceptable fire," and so, the company was obliged to compensate the insured for his loss. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the judge's ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he had lost in "the fires."

However, shortly after the man cashed his cheque, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case used as evidence against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning the rare cigars and sentenced to 24 consecutive one-year prison terms.

It could only happen in America!

Proximate cause

Those of us who have been in the insurance game know all about proximate cause. it's an old insurance definition - offically it's "The active efficient cause that sets in motion a train of events which brings about a result without the intervention of any new force starting and working actively from a new and independent source".

In other words it can be a simple accident or incident that then goes on to initiate a whole series of what would have been unrelated events.

I was reminded of proximate cause when I heard the following story from Tennessee this week.

"Things went from bad to worse and just kept going downhill from there for one Memphis, Tennessee man last week. Police arrested the unidentified man after a series of events that you generally only see in a good action movie. Here's what happened:

After the man crashed his car into a pole, he went to a nearby house and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he kicked in a window and was promptly shot by the homeowner. The man, who was bleeding, then left, but not before he removed his pants and some other articles of clothing. He showed up at a McDonald's and threw a rock through the front window. By that point, witnesses at the restaurant say the man had taken off all of his clothes, except for a shirt and his underpants. Eventually, he was taken to the hospital. Authorities plan to press charges after he checks out."

The world's gone mad!!

And let this be a warning to you!!

So, let's get the ball rolling then!

I've spent over 40 years in this business and I reckon I've just about seen it all - unless you know better.

I'll be building up a reference dedicated to those fabulous members of the great Insured who have done their best to either beat the system - or come crashing into contact with it!

We'll start off then with those old chestnuts - and favourites - the Insurance Claim excuses. Try these for good measure.

These excuses were on accident claim forms of a major insurance company. Clients were asked for a brief statement describing their particular accident - and this is what they wrote:

1. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention.
2. I thought my window was down but found it was up when I put my hand through it.
3. A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.
4. The guy was all over the place. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.
5. I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.
6. The accident occured when I was attempting to bring my car out of a skid by steering it into the other vehicle.
7. I was driving my car out of the driveway in the usual manner, when it was struck by the other car in the same place it had been struck several times before.
8. I was on my way to the doctor's with rear-end trouble when my universal joint gave way, causing me to have an accident.
9. As I approached the intersection, a stop sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
10. The telephone pole was approaching fast. I was attempting to swerve out of its path when it struck my front end.
11. To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front, I struck the pedestrian.
12. My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle.
13. An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished.
14. When I saw I could not avoid a collision, I stepped on the gas and crashed into the other car.
15. The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran him over.
16. I saw the slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car.
17. Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have.
18. The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.
19. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention.
20. I saw the slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car.

Priceless!!