Elsie Lange
A Sunbury man has been refunded more than $3700 by his insurance company after he told of feeling trapped by his funeral insurance plan.
Disability pensioner David Cail was relying on food banks to survive as more than $43 a fortnight was deducted from his pension by TAL Insurance to cover premiums on his $15,000 plan.
Last month, Star Weekly reported how David had already paid $15,000, and was set to pay more than $30,000 by the time he reached 90 years old and fortnightly premiums were no longer required.
But after Star Weekly raised the case with TAL, the company offered him a $3795 refund and to lower his fortnightly payment to about $2.
After recovering from two debilitating bouts of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma since 2014, David, 63, is now undergoing chemotherapy for terminal cancer in his brain – he said the refund had “come at the right time”.
“I can get more food, or more medication, because my medication now has gone up because I’m on more tablets,” David said.
In the early 2000s, after David saw an ad for funeral insurance on television, he thought it made sense to sign up as a single man with no kids or partner – it would take the burden off his family, he thought.
He didn’t grasp at the time what would be required of him for decades.
Consumer Action Law Centre managing lawyer Philippa Heir spoke with David, and said her organisation continues to see people paying thousands of dollars in premiums for funeral insurance, in many cases far exceeding any pay out.
“Often, the premium payments increase steeply over time and become unaffordable, which means you can lose the insurance entirely and waste all the money you’ve paid,” Ms Heir said.
David wants his story to encourage people to speak up if they are in a similar situation, and for it to lead to better regulation of the industry.
“I just feel there’s a new ad for another funeral thing, and people aren’t going to realise what they’re going to get into. Everybody should read the fine print and understand that if they take out a funeral plan, it should only be to the amount of a funeral plan,” David said.
“Anybody who’s in the same boat that I was, get in touch with the CALC or report it to the local paper reporter and see if they’re interested in taking up the story.”
