Archives for September 2016

Writing in the Herald recently, columnist Polly Gillespie says:

“I suspect I need to be more careful when selecting beauty procedures.

I was fortunate enough to be offered a treatment that gets rid of red veins and freckles on the face. …. I don’t like the little red spider veins I’ve got from being a good Kiwi lass who goes out for brisk walks in howling southerlies, hits the beach a little too often and … is getting older. I thought the idea of having them zapped away seemed brilliant.

I may have underestimated the immediate collateral damage.

I was told there might be a little swelling, but I had no idea I would end up looking like a caricature of myself.

I quite possibly should not leave the house for a week, or two.

If there is going to be an extreme or violent reaction to anything, I’m your girl.

To type this on my iPad I have to close my right eye and tilt my head down on a precarious angle.

I’ve been icing my face for the past two days but it’s not getting better. In fact, it’s getting worse. Yesterday all the puff was in my cheeks where I was zapped. This morning it looks like I’ve been crying solidly for a month and had an allergic reaction to pineapple.

So I’m stuck indoors dreading having to go and visit my mum. I love my mum, but having to go out in public will be excruciating.

Yes, products and procedures, even for something seemingly so innocuous as for beauty treatment, may have more serious medical consequences for some people.

In most cases, like Polly’s, they aren’t too serious and we can choose to laugh them off, or turn them into a humorous anecdote. And good on her for doing so.

But what if she was going to a important function, or a job interview and wanted to look her best? What if a bride wanted to look radiant on her big day?

And what if there was a more serious side to this – that a product or treatment caused more serious or lasting damage? That would spell trouble to the recipient and to the purveyor of treatment.

Get a Liability Quote here

Product imported into New Zealand and sold by a distributor or retailer can be deemed to be the responsibility of the domestic reseller – who can legally take the place of the manufacturer.

Treatments, and advice can also often be directly the responsibility of the individual or company supplying them.

That is why it is important – even if it seems over the top – for all kinds of professions and therapists to carry Public Liability Insurance, which also has Product Liability, and often a Professional Indemnity cover, to protect themselves, their business, livelihood and employers, from the consequences of the unforeseen and unexpected.

In an age when it seems that allergies are growing ever more present, and allergic reactions more extreme more often, Insurance is an essential Business Survival tool.

Talk to RDi today should you want to know more about protecting your livelihood.

Get a Liability Quote here

To read the full article from the Herald click here

It’s easy to dismiss cyber crime as irrelevant to your business — who would actually take the time to exact a cyber crime against your small business instead of attacking the big guys?

The reality is that cyber crime hit more than half of all New Zealand businesses of all sizes last year – 56%. That’s more cyber crime incidents than fire and (physical) theft claims.

And small businesses are the most likely not to protect against cyber crime, making them more vulnerable to the threat.

Almost all businesses have some internet presence or make use of the internet in their everyday business dealings, so in truth cyber crime presents a risk to even the smallest businesses.

Virtually all businesses have records on computer,  data emails, job types, invoices. Information of a personal nature about customers, budget details and maybe banking details and card numbers. Employee profiles, banking details. Your private information, and identifying numbers (like driver’s licence, IRD etc)

The consequences of such data being breached and used, sold on or made public, can be wide-ranging.

What is a cyber crime?

In basic terms, cyber crime is a blanket term for any type of activity of a criminal nature that is carried out using a computer and/or the internet.

Cyber crime includes all of the following:

Identity theft
Ransomware
Use of viruses
Computer hacking
Phishing and Online scams
Fraud
Information and Password theft

Criminals don’t necessarily need to hack your systems to commit cyber crime; if they manage to get their hands on a laptop, iPad or mobile phone belonging to your business (either because it has been stolen or left unattended), they have easy access to your information and are able to more easily commit their crimes.

How will cyber crime affect my business?

The ways in which cyber crime can affect your business are actually a lot broader than you might expect and are often ongoing and costly.

Beyond the general business interruption, a breach of data that results in personal information of customers or employees being made public can result in significant fines, legal fees, and costs associated with investigating the breach and notifying customers of the potential effects it may have on them.

Your existing customers are potentially likely to get put off from continuing to work with you or buy from you;  new customers might be put off by word of mouth or bad publicity.

Reducing the Risk of Attack.

To help minimise the risk of a cyber attack you can employ the following protections:

Reputable anti-virus programs
Secure data back-up
Firewall technology
Data encryption
Laptop and mobile security
Have social media policies for staff

You can talk to your IT providers and supports about these. There are some very good IT professionals providing external services to businesses in New Zealand.

But even if you do have all the right systems and software in place, your business is still at risk — particularly if your business involves the collection of customer information, including personal, credit card and bank details.

What does cyber insurance cover?

Although policies will vary between insurers, a typical cyber insurance policy is designed to help you with both preventing breaches in the first place and dealing with them if and when they occur. Cyber insurance policies usually include the following:

The cost of restoring or recreating electronic data after an attack
Forensic services to investigate a breach
PR support  in the event that a breach harms your business’s reputation
Assistance guarding against data breaches, hacking and employee error
Guidance on how to respond to a breach
Funds to cover the adverse financial effects related to a breach
Funds to cover any fines that might be payable following a breach

Cyber Insurance policies have been developed by some of the most innovative and forward thinking Insurance providers in New Zealand, and are available through Brokers.

RDi can provide the advice, support and quotes that you need to adequately protect your business, your customers and your employees. Get in Contact with us today.

Home Insurance has become more difficult for homeowners in the past few years, and a good broker should guide you through the process. Contact RDi to make sure you’re fully covered.

The Treasury has recently compiled a report on the transition to a Sum Insured policy wording from the old Full Replacement cover that insurers brought in as a response to the Christchurch quakes.

They found that NZ householders could be insuring their properties for too little an amount to replace them – by up to a staggering $184 Billion.

Though the burden would not hit all homeowners at any single time, and some would not lose at all, there are risks for thousands – and the government would be unlikely to step in.

“We concluded that under-insurance was a real issue across New Zealand,” said report writer James Sergeant, senior analyst, financial markets at the NZ Treasury.

“The estimates spanned a wide range, both in terms of the number of homes affected, and the amount of under-insurance. Our final assessment was that up to 85% of homes could be under-insured by an average of 28%.”

While Sergeant admitted that the $184 Billion figure ‘overstated the risk’, since a natural catastrophe such as an earthquake would be limited to one location not the entire country, and not every householder would need to claim to the limit of their cover, further investigation using EQC modelling produced some more realistic figures, still using the under-insurance assumptions identified.

“This produced a shortfall of around $135 million, which is far smaller than the national figure,” Sergeant said in the report.

“Most homeowners (95%) would not experience a shortfall at all, but the impact on some households would be severe, with several thousand households facing an average shortfall of around $40,000.”

Sergeant said their conclusion was that the Government would therefore be unlikely to be called upon to fill the gap, and new requirements of insurers and brokers would not need to be imposed.

This, however, puts the onus firmly on the homeowners to assess their rebuild values carefully – or risk losing out.

“The insurance industry needs to continue its effort to support well-informed home owner decisions on their sum-insured values,” Sergeant said in the report, adding that banks also had an interest in mortgage-holders having sufficient cover in place in order to protect the value of their collateral.

A number of online calculators are available to assess your home’s rebuild value, and RDi can take you through this process to get a report that can be relied upon in the majority of cases.

Where a home is architecturally designed, with high end features, a property valuer should be engaged.

If you want to start a quote now, please click the button