"ACTS OF GOD" INSURANCE RULE UNFAIR TO CAR OWNERS - PIMENTEL

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today assailed the strict but deceptive policy of insurance companies not to indemnify owners of motor vehicles damaged or destroyed by typhoons even if these are covered by comprehensive insurance plans for which they have paid higher premium fees.

Pimentel said thousands of owners of cars wrecked by typhoon Ondoy feel they have been defrauded in the face of the insurers' refusal to honor payment claims for the repair of their vehicles on the ground that these are classified as "acts of God" beyond the scope of the insurance plan.

The opposition bewailed that insurance firms deliberately resort to the so-called "acts of God" rule to evade payments, leaving the car owners' insurance useless to protect them from such contingency.

Saying this rule is patently prejudicial to the interest of car owners, he underscored the need to amend the Insurance Law that would prohibit the insertion of such provision in comprehensive insurance policies.

What is the use of having a comprehensive insurance policy, which applies even to car theft but excludes so-called acts of God like floods? the senator asked.

"I find that a little unfair. And it looks like we have been had because in the United States, if you say comprehensive insurance, that includes all contingencies. There is no reference to acts God as exceptions."

"Perhaps we have to revisit the insurance policies that are issued in this country, comprehensive but does not cover so-called acts of God. What kind of comprehensive insurance would that be if one's car, for example, gets destroyed because there was flooding and they call it an act of God?" he said.

"And so they escape from having to pay what is due to the car owner under of a comprehensive nature of the insurance policy."

Moreover, Pimentel said what makes the reasoning of insurance firms invalid and unacceptable was the fact that the widespread heavy flooding in Metro Manila and nearby provinces was due partly to man-made causes.

"In other words, the non-cleaning of drainages, the precipitate opening of the dams these are acts of men, not of God. Why do we blame God for the things that we are doing in this country? This is something that defies imagination," he said

The minority leader said the hapless car owners could not compel the insurance firms to pay up unless somebody will try to fight it out in the courts.

"But the ultimate remedy would be for an amendment of the Insurance Law which will not allow such 'act of God' provision to be inserted in certain insurance policies," he said.