Greater National Group - Important Notices & Information

Both parties to an insurance contract, the Insurer and the Insured, must act towards each other with the utmost good faith. If you fail to do so, the Insurer can cancel your insurance. If the Insurer fails to do so, you may be able to sue the Insurer.

Before you enter into an insurance contract, you have a duty to tell the Insurer anything that you know, or could be reasonably expected to know, may affect the Insurers’ decision to insure you and on what terms. You have the same duty before you renew, extend, vary or reinstate an insurance contract. For Eligible Contracts (Eligible Contracts involve individuals purchasing insurance for motor vehicles with carrying capacity under 2 tonne, motorcycle, home building and contents, residential strata, travel, personal accident and sickness and consumer credit) the above duty only applies to questions asked of you by the Insurer. In answering any such questions you must tell them anything that you know and that a reasonable person in the circumstances would include. If you do not tell the Insurer anything you are required to, they may cancel your contract or reduce the amount they will pay you if you make a claim, or both. If your failure to tell the Insurer is fraudulent, they may refuse to pay a claim and treat the contract as if it never existed.

If you need advice on your insurance covers or arrangements please contact one of our Account Managers. They are happy to answer minor queries over the phone, but written advice or confirmation should be sought in relation to any matter on which you propose to rely.

Under the Corporations Act 2001 and associated Regulations - Retail Clients are provided with additional levels of protection from other insurance purchasers. The Act defines Retail Clients as: Individuals or a small manufacturing business employing less than 100 people or any other business employing less than 20 people, and that are being provided a financial service or product that relates to the following insurance covers: Motor Vehicle (under 2 tonne), Home building, contents, personal and domestic, Sickness and Accident or Travel, Consumer Credit and other classes as prescribed by regulations.

If you are a RETAIL CLIENT (refer above) and a Statement of Advice has not been provided to you with this invoice then the advice we are giving you related to this transaction is General Advice. General Advice is advice that has been prepared without considering your current objective’s, financial situation or needs. Therefore, before acting on this advice, you should consider the appropriateness of the advice having regard to your current objective’s, financial situation or needs. If the advice provided relates to the acquisition or possible acquisition of a new insurance policy and the Insurer has prepared a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) we will have attached the PDS for your review. You should consider the PDS prior to making the decision to purchase this product. Further details regarding the income we have been paid by the Insurer for this transaction is available on request.

It is important that the Insurer be notified of any alteration in the risk insured, e.g. name of Insured, situation of risk, details of property covered, criminal convictions relating to the Insured or any other person indemnified by the policy, etc. In particular, if a motor vehicle is insured by a policy, details of all driving convictions in the past 5 years of the Insured or any other person who may regularly drive the vehicle as well as any modifications to the vehicle insured must be made known to the Insurer. Failure to advise the Insurer of important information concerning the Insured and the risk insured could prejudice claims under the policy.

When you lease hire or borrow property, make sure that the contract clearly identifies who is responsible for insuring the property.

Many policies exclude cover for an interest in the insured property held by someone other than the named Insured, unless that interest is specifically noted on the policy. For example, if property is jointly owned, or subject to finance, the interest of the joint owner or financier may be excluded, if it is not specifically noted on the policy.

If you sign a contract with an indemnity, “hold harmless” or release, it can invalidate your insurance – unless you obtain the Insurer’s consent in advance. These clauses are often found in leases and contracts you may be asked to sign from time to time relating to a business. Do not sign such a contract or lease without contacting us and/or taking legal advice as to whether the contract terms will prejudice your policy.

Should you become a party to any agreement that has the effect of excluding or limiting your Insurer’s ability to recover from a third party, your Insurer may have the right to refuse to indemnify you for such loss where it is shown that your Insurer’s rights of recovery have been prejudiced by your action.

If a person is to be named on your policy or insured as a co-insured or joint insured, notify us immediately so we can request this in advance from the Insurer. Your property and liability policies will not provide automatic cover for the insurable interest of other parties (e.g. mortgagees, lessors). Check with us whether the Insurer will include someone else as an Insured under your policy or note their interests on your policy.

Please note that where possible we prefer to provide all correspondence and disclosure notices (including Financial Services Guides and Product Disclosure Statements) to you electronically, via email or links to websites etc. If you have provided your email address to us we will typically use that email address for all correspondence and disclosure notices. Should you not wish to be sent disclosure documents electronically please let us know and we will update our records accordingly.

In some cases we use the services of Wholesale Brokers or Underwriting Agents (other insurance intermediaries) to access products that are not available to us directly from the Insurer. You can identify where we have used an insurance intermediary as the Invoice/Schedule will show that the policy Insurer is another insurance intermediary and Underwritten by the end Insurer. This situation usually arises where the insurance intermediary has developed a specialised product and competitive pricing for risks that are not commonly available directly from most Insurers. This means we are not dealing with the end Insurer directly but via the insurance intermediary. All insurance intermediaries we deal with are required to hold an Australian Financial Services Licence and to place all client funds received into a Trust Account and are required to meet the same high standards in the delivery of their services that apply to us. Importantly all claims will be the ultimate responsibility of and paid for by the end Insurer. Should you wish to access the Financial Services Guide of the insurance intermediary please contact us and we will arrange to have a copy sent to you.

Premium funding allows you to spread out the cash flow associated with paying your insurance premiums over the next twelve months. We receive a commission from the funder for arranging the funding contract; full details are available on request. Please note that should the insurance policy be cancelled before the expiry date for whatever reason, the Premium Funder will charge you the full interest applicable to the contract, as detailed in the Loan Application Form. Typically there will be no refund of our commission on the refund premium and no refund of any fee we may have charged you for arranging the cover. We also reserve the right to charge you a policy cancellation handling fee. In some cases Insurers also apply minimum premiums to policies, which may further reduce the refund that you might otherwise receive. The impact of the above on you is that any refund you receive for the mid term cancellation of your policy will usually be significantly less than a pro rata calculation would produce and in extreme cases may involve you having to make an additional final payment even though the policy has been cancelled. Therefore prior to cancelling a policy and replacing it with another cover we strongly recommend that you discuss your situation with us so that we can advise the exact extent and impact of the early cancellation provisions mentioned above.

Some policies contain an Average or Co-insurance clause. This means that if you insure for less than the full value of the property, your claim may be reduced in proportion to the amount of the under-insurance. Some business interruption policies also contain an Average/Co-insurance clause which has a similar application. Check your policy and contact us with any questions.

Most of your policies do not provide indemnity in respect of events that occurred prior to commencement of the contract. They cover events that occur during the policy period.

Some policies (e.g. professional indemnity insurance) provide cover on a “claims made” basis. This means claims first advised to you (or made against you) and reported to your Insurer during the policy period are insured under that policy, irrespective of when the incident causing the claim occurred. If you become aware of circumstances which could give rise to a claim, notify the Insurer during the policy period. Report all incidents that may give rise to a claim against you to the Insurers immediately after they come to your attention and before the policy expires.

If a cover is cancelled before expiry of the period of insurance, we reserve the right to refund to you only the net return premium we received from the Insurer, and not refund any part of the brokerage or fees we receive for arranging the cover. A broker service fee may be charged to process the cancellation.

If you are not satisfied with our services please contact our Complaints Officer. We are members of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), a free consumer service. Further information is available from our office, or contact AFCA directly on 1800 931 678 or visit www.afca.org.au. We also follow the Insurance Brokers Code of Practice.