Baring all on social networking sites could cost you that insurance claim

Way to live man. Just stepped out of Z**** after a few drinks and going with H** and S**** to their house for a party.

Baba Ramdev is God! My sugar levels which were over 200 in 2008 are now fully in control. Try it out

You haven’t lived till you have climbed the vertical cliff face at Tiger’s leap.

What are these innocuous tweets doing in this column? Let me explain.

Most Indians use social networking websites like Facebook, twitter and orkut. Employers have already woken up to the negative impact of confidential information leaking out (mostly unintentionally) to the world through the actions of an irresponsible employee. So there are strict company policies on how to use social networking in relation to the company.

There are instances of people caught cheating because of their status updates and friends list, with some cases even leading to divorces due to this. To this list, where social networking is having an impact, please add your financial lives as well.

A friend of mine is an insurance broker and one of his clients had a minor car accident with another car while driving at night. The cars of both parties were damaged and they went to the police station and filed the necessary reports to enable them to make an insurance claim. My friend was assisting his client in the claim process and was shocked when the insurance company rejected the claim. The reason was that the driver (the client) was under the influence of alcohol when the accident happened (accident claims, while the driver is under the influence of alcohol, are excluded in car insurance policies). My friend went through all the police reports and could not find a single reference to such a thing in them. He checked with the client who denied that he was drunk when the accident happened. When my friend demanded the source of the insurance company’s information they pointed out the first tweet (given in the article above) in the clients’ twitter account with a date and time stamp that corroborated perfectly with the accident date and time. My friend’s client had no option but to forget about his claim.

Just think of the person who wrote the second tweet forgetting to mention his diabetes to a health insurance company or the person who wrote the third tweet forgetting to mention his hazardous rock-climbing hobby to the insurer. It never makes sense to hide anything from your insurance company while buying a policy.  With a question mark hanging over the claim, it will not give you the peace of mind that you are paying the premium for. If you bare all on social media websites, it is doubly hazardous.

So if you occasionally reveal facts about yourself on social networking sites, don’t hide the same from your insurer.

However, all this openness of certain people is good for genuine customers since it will reduce the number of fraudulent claims, thereby making it cheaper for them in the long run.

Hopefully, insurance companies will also be as smart while accepting insurance proposals as they are while scrutinizing claims.

The writer is CEO, Apna Paisa, a price & features comparison engine for loans, insurance and investments. He can be reached at hrdna@apnapaisa.com.