The 2024 Mansfield Awards for Claims Excellence are just over 3 months away and we could really do with your help with ensuring the best of the best win. If you have had a claim yourself or are an adviser who has had a client or clients have a claim, we would really appreciate your taking a few minutes to rate the claims service. To do this please visit: https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/7253764/Claims-Comparison-Survey and have your say. Thank you in anticipation and if you are in Sydney on 25th July please come along. We will be introducing 3 new important categories for 2025 to honour those t ..read more

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The following question was asked of one of the LMI team who intern asked me to address it. Hi, Sorry –  another tech question.  Could you advise why the Steadfast Wording requires a sub-limit for Unabandoned Undamaged Portion of a Building.  Per the wording, the increase in sale value is regarded as salvage value taken by the insurer?  Does having a sub-limit benefit or is it a disadvantage to the Insured?  Await your advice Kind regards, [name and email withheld] It is a great question and I thought I would share my reply with readers so that it may help more than jus ..read more

Earlier this week LMI received a contact us message from our website claiming that a photograph or photographs on our website were subject to copywrite. LMI have a strict rule around the publishing of photographs and we only use photos one of our team took, a customer or broker we know and trust took and gave us permission to use or stock photographs from a stock photograph company we have subscribed to for over 20 years. This is the message we received: Goodwin Law does appear to be a genuine firm with offices in several countries according to a Google search but to be sure I sent the messag ..read more

I read this morning that the NSW Fire and Rescue have today reported that there have been 45 fires directly related to lithium batteries since the beginning of the 2024 year.  Sadly also two people have lost their lives in the fires and possibly a third yet to be confirmed. The reality is that Lithium batteries are in many items today and we need to personally manage the risk. It appears to me that the majority of the fires occur in cheaper appliances where the battery management system is not what it ought to be. I do not leave any batteries on charge overnight and have things like power ..read more

One of the ever increasing costs of being a landlord, particularly in Victoria is land tax and property rates. The values of properties are being reviewed by state governements and/or local councils and it is going up year on year. Another trick that some States Governments have introduced, and I again use Victoria as an example is that the property owner only has 60 days in which to lodge an appeal. This is catching a lot of people out who find out the value being put on their property is way too high. So what is the implication for insurance and rental insurance in all its various forms. Wel ..read more

In the claims we are handling we are seeing more and more that the Indemnity Period runs out before the business returns to normal. This is due to a number of issues including but not limited to: Inordinate delays by local councils granting approvals. Often for the most ridiculous of reasons. This is magnified making it hundreds of times worse when a natural catastrophe hits. In some cases, I have seen it taking 5 years to get approvals. The shortage of builders and building materials. The claim process itself is just taking longer and longer and I welcome the ASIC enquiry into claims handing ..read more

I think we all know the importance of reviewing declared values, sums insured and or Limits of Liabilty every year. This is extremely important at the moment with construction costs escallating as much as they have in the past. The same issue is there for machinery and plant, other contents and replacement stock. In addition to this the Australian dollar has fallen in value with the United States dollar since 1 July 2023. While I am seeing some uplift in declared values etc., I fear sub-limits are not being uplifted anywhere near as much. In some cases, they have remained the same for the past ..read more

I refer to several articles that have appeared lately about a landlord who has been charged for failing to install fire alarms in a home that caught fire which alegegly resulted in 6 people perishing. Here is a link to one of the articles. Fire-Alarm-ReplacementDownload Since this has been reported a number of people have discussed this with me not knowing that this was the law, as far as I know in every state and territory. One for example, had detectors which were over 20 years old and while they had been replacing the batteries every year were not aware the whole unit needed to be replaced ..read more

Today marks LMI Group’s quarter century of service to the insurance industry and wider communities. What better way to reflect on all that our dedicated team have accomplished but list 50 highlights from our first 25 years that you may not know (or have forgotten) the Group. As an aside, I tried to narrow this down to 25 for 25 but I was over this in our first 10 years. I have still dropped quite a few off to keep it to 50. LMI Group commence trading on 25th February 1999 with 3 Divisions. Loss Management International (Post loss Claims Preparation and Loss Adjusting), Risk Management Interna ..read more