Insurable Interest Or Reject Claim

Under the Insurance Act 1996, a beneficiary or nominee is a person who is named in the policy and he can receive the policy monies from the insurer and give a proper discharge. He may or may not be the real `’beneficiary’ of the policy benefits, depending on who he is and whether additional arrangement has been made to ensure that he also receives the money beneficially.

Those with insurable interests included spouses, parents or children, employers or employees, and debtors or creditors. A nominee with insurable interests is depicted as one who will suffer both mentally, emotionally, and financially when the insured dies. The insured has every right to name anyone as a nominee so long as the nominee commands an insurable interest.

39-year-old Paw Gin Bin who was initially thought to be a victim of a hit-and-run accident on a remote road in Sibu Jaya at 6.30pm last Sept 26. Suspicions over his death surfaced after family members of Paw, an odd job worker who also sold lottery result slips, discovered that he had bought insurance policies with compensations totalling RM700,000 a few months earlier and had named a stranger as his nominee.

After getting the court order, police exhumed his body and the one-hour post mortem at Sibu Hospital mortuary on Jan 30 suggested Paw’s chest had been run over by the tyre of a car.