p>For life, funeral, and income protection claims, the step will usually be as follows:</p><ol> <li>You’ll need to call the dedicated claims number found in your Product Disclosure Statement (usually under the ‘Claims’ or ‘Making a claim’ section), and the claims department will either email or post a claim form for you to fill out.</li> <li>You either post or email the form back using the contact details provided on the form, and once the insurer has received all the necessary documentation, your claim will then be assessed. If approved, a payment for your benefit will be made promptly to your nominated bank account (or a bank cheque if you don’t have an Australian bank account). </li></ol><p>Below are some tips to ensure that your claim is assessed as quickly as possible:</p><ul> <ul> <li>You should make sure that you complete the claim form in full and that you include all the supporting documents that are requested when you send your claim to the insurer.</li> <li>If you don’t understand some of the questions asked on the form, or there’s something you’re not sure about, you can ring the claims department.</li> <li>Depending on the type of claim you make, there’s sometimes a medical form that must be completed by the treating medical professional in relation to the condition for which you’re claiming, so ensure that you give this form to them as soon as possible.</li> <li>In some cases, the insurer may also need to get some additional information from you, and once they have this information, they’ll consider it along with the rest of your claim as quickly as possible.</li> </ul></ul><p>The length of time to assess and provide an outcome will depend on the nature and complexity of your claim. Sometimes the insurer may require additional reports from your medical practitioners or from government organisations like Medicare, and this means that the claim is subject to their turnaround times to acquire this information. If this occurs, your dedicated claims agent will inform you and keep you up to date with the progress of your claim.</p><p>Funeral claims are generally pretty straight forward and assuming the insurer is satisfied with all the information provided, then these can take only a few days to be paid out.</p><p>For pet insurance claims, if you bought your policy through Choosi, you can make a claim online through your policy’s online claims portal (generally there’s a link provided on their website) or you can download a claim form from the portal and fill that out. Pet insurance claims work by reimbursement, meaning that you’ll need to pay upfront for the cost of your pet’s treatment, and any eligible portion of that cost will be reimbursed when you make a claim through your policy. Some vets also offer <a href="https://gaponly.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">GapOnly</a> which allows you or your vet to make a claim upfront for the cost of any eligible vet treatment costs, and you only pay the gap (there’s no need to wait for a reimbursement from your policy).</p