Transit Insurance Notes
Page 39
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PROPOSAL FORMS
IT has become almost standard 'practice for a proposal form to be completed before any transit insurance is arranged. For just as no two hauliers' businesses are exactly alike as regards, for example, the type of goods carried or the area served, so do insurance companies find it both fair and necessary to consider each such business separately in estimating what the premium is to be. For this reason proposal forms are most carefully worded, so that the answers to the stated questions should show every material fact which will guide an insurance company in deciding whether it will accept a " risk " or not, and, if so, whether at one rate of premium or another.
The completion of a proposal form is, therefore, a serious business and it would be well if this were more generally realized. For if any material question on a proposal form be not answered correctly, or if answers be given which, whilst correct in themselves, do not make a full disclosure of all relevant information, then an insurance company may be well within its rights in refusing to meet any claim which may, subsequently, arise. In other words, any insurance policy which is obtained other than as the result of a proposal form which has been honestly and fully completed in 'every possible way will, in the long run, probably be found to have less actual value than the paper on which it is written.