More than once we have been brought into situations where things just don’t add up and we have a difficult time figuring out why. Our first inclination is generally not that what we received from the insurance carrier is factually incorrect, but it always has to be in the list of potential issues.
As sad as it is to admit, sometimes, when dealing with insurance carriers, we have an attitude that if we call three times and get the same answer twice, we run with it. Of course, some things are too important to have that attitude, and in those scenarios, we have to dig deeper.
We have had cases were policy holders have been presented with formal basis and gain calculations which we proved were wrong or times when a policy owner has been repeatedly told her policy was not convertible/in force/etc. when we could prove it was. We’ve determined that the computer generated ledgers on policies from some of the largest insurance carriers in the world were mistakes or adversely affected by a system limitation years earlier, at the point of inception, which would cause the policy to fail prematurely. We’ve single handedly gone up against one of the largest law firms in the nation which was counsel to one of the largest insurance players in the market and proved to them they were misinterpreting insurance and tax law which, in turn, allowed a desired transaction to take place.
Ultimately, each of the companies in these situations had to acquiesce because we were factually right. No opinion, no self serving slant, we were simply right. Getting satisfactory resolution to issues like these is like turning the Titanic but we always eventually succeeded.
The point is, don’t always take something at face value simply because it looks official and you are told it is right.
