Claim Connection - get people help

Let's do this: create a website that lists advisers who are willing to help people claim on their life insurance or income protection policies for free. (Of course they are free to charge a client for advice on what to do with that money).

I want to make it easier for the community to access great people who are willing to help and prevent them from having to pay thousands of dollars to a third party to secure a benefit the insurer would have likely paid anyway. 

Hey my name is Michael Baragwanath, I run a financial planning firm (Enva) with my business partner Darren Farley and a small software company (Connection Engine). 

We help people who need to claim on their personal insurance; for example if someone dies, becomes disabled or injured. We recommend insurance to most of our clients and of course we're here to help when they claim. 

So what about people who didn't buy a policy from us? 
We help them as well and we do it for free. 
We think it's important to support the community and to be there to help people during a terrifying and very stressful time. We help with claims all the time and we're very good at it. 

Being a good business is good business for us. We often find that helping people trains our staff on the importants of having quality insurance cover. It also often leads other opportunities and if nothing else people need help managing the money they obtain from a claim. 

We know we're not alone. Many advisers do the same thing we do and very few people know about it. 

If there is interest from the community (and from other advisers) we're happy to build a website that makes it easy for someone who needs help to get it at no cost and quickly. 

Approximately $300 will go to the purchase of a domain and hosting costs, we will donate our time to create the site and all other donations will go to promoting the service via social media, search engine paid ads etc. 

Why does this mean so much to us? We love being able to help people secure a payment from their insurer. Most people are terrified that the insurance company will go out of it's way to decline a claim and we've rarely if ever found this to be the case. 

There are two very important reasons why we feel it's important to be involved and to communicate what we do with the community: 

1) When a person recieves a disability claim from their super it's often the only large amount of money coming their way. Ensuring that the payment doesn't get chewed up in fees to facilitate the payment is paramount. 

2) A lumpsum payment from an insurer needs to be carefully managed, just like a lottery win it's VERY common for people to make unnessasary purchases and wind up worse off very quickly. Careful management of the proceeds can and needs to go a long way.


Oh and why the picture of the cat? Why not? Can't be any worse than the normal "nothing" photos that financial services companies post all over the place can it ?

A bit of detail: you might ask if the service is truely free or if payment bundled in some amazing way that means the adviser is paid (something that has plaged financial services for years) Advisers will only be allowed to join if they commit to providing claims support services for free. They ARE able to admit defeat and refer you to an ombusman service or legal professional which may attract a fee and to charge for the cost of determining how your funds should invested or allocated. They are also able to collect commissions or fees from the provision of advice to friends or family members.