Top insurer gets a R40m rebuke from furious judge
Chrisopher Watson sued Renasa and won, and also won in the SCA, but pending another hearing on the size of the payout, Renasa still refused to hand over even the amount it agreed it owed
Renasa, which was previously named as commercial insurer of the year, went to “quite extraordinary lengths” to avoid paying an R18m claim for machines destroyed in a fire. The company accused Christopher Watson of arson at his Cape Town print-finishing company and then stood by as he remortgaged his home, sold his car and borrowed money from his mother in his vain attempts to keep the business going. But eight years after his Elsies River factory burnt down, a judge has come to Watson’s rescue, ordering Renasa to pay him the R18m, plus 15.5% annual interest backdated to January 2011. The insurer’s bill will come to just over R40m, and Cape Town high court judge Judith Cloete also ordered it to pay several million rand in Watson’s costs. Renasa, where the chair is insurance veteran Don Eriksson, was named commercial insurer of the year for the past two years by the Financial Intermediaries Association. “These awards again confirm Renasa’s position among the industry’s leading insurer...
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