Insurance claims – truth stranger than fiction

An elderly man was penalised for the twin crimes of failing to keep one’s savings in a secure bank and keeping secrets from one’s wife when the wad of cash he had secretly stashed in the couple’s rarely-used wood fire oven went up in smoke when she decided to prepare (an also rare) home-cooked meal.

It might sound like the subplot of some bizarre work of fiction, but, in actual fact, it’s all in a day’s work for the folk at Allianz Australia — according to a list the insurer released today of strange but true insurance claims.

According to the company’s general manager of corporate affairs, Nicholas Schofield, a day in the life of an Allianz insurer is anything but ordinary.

“We hear quite a few interesting stories through our claims … from a car crash caused by a ghost to horses eating car interiors.”

Perhaps, surprisingly, many of these claims are successful.

“You couldn’t make some of these stories up if you tried,” said Schofield.

“It goes to show that truth really can be stranger than fiction.”

Some of the more unusual claims paid by Allianz in 2007 include an Adelaide-based woman who was robbed of her extensive (and apparently expensive) collection of sex toys, a rural NSW-based family whose home inside a hill was destroyed when a cow fell through their skylight and a northern Queensland-based man who’s car was written off when he swerved to avoid hitting the local celebrity ghost.

While Allianz were somewhat doubtful about the circumstances of the last claim, it was paid on the basis that it could not be proven that ghosts do not exist.