Must see for EK pilots - Income protection issue
 

If you had doubts about the Topcover income protection plan, then take a look at this thread on Fragrant Habour.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=276853

After that contact EPC LIPS for your insurance needs.

This might be the most important posting on pprune for EK pilots. I can remember when LIPS was about to become an option for EK pilots and suddenly I started getting lots of information from TOPCOVER regarding how wonderful and how well underwritten they were. It made me quite suspicious as well when someone (and I forget who he was) fired off a letter to all of us in an attempt to make us wary of LIPS.

The larger the insurance company, the more underwritten it is and the more lawyers it has, the less likely you will ever see any compensation if you are entitled to it.

About a year ago a member of my family passed on and to this day the insurance company has not paid one cent in spite of them receiving premiums for over 40 years from the deceased. It is the same pattern described about TOPCOVER in the post on the other forum. Delay, ignore and in the end it comes down to getting a lawyer, thereby reducing the payout benefit.

Its none of my business what other pilots at EK do, but I truly believe that LIPS is a good option and TOPCOVER is a total waste of money.

What was that John Grisham book called?

No more Top Cover for me.

EPC´ much better

Cheers

Please do your homework......
 

The insurance market is littered with failed self-funded income protection schemes, why would the EK one be any different?

You are all clever chaps, open excel and do the sums yourself:

Worldwide average age of claimants = 49 years old. Under LIPS that's an 11 year payout at Dhs 25,000 per month.

For each claimant that is Dhs 300K per year, or a 'liability' for the scheme of Dhs 3.3m.

Premium Dhs 320 per pilot per month.

Average number of annual claims worldwide is 3 pilots in every 1000.

If you have 1000 pilots in the scheme the fund receives Dhs 3,840,000 per year in premium and pays out Dhs 900,000 per year in claims. The same for year two except that the claims are now Dhs 1.8m (it’s cumulative don't you know) and by year 4 the fund is paying out almost as much as it receives. Every year thereafter is the slippery slope into the abyss.

One thing for sure is that when you buy insurance you want the certainty that what you have bought can meet its financial commitments. With the LIPS scheme you don’t have that, if there is money in the pot, you’ll get paid, if not you won’t. Why anyone would place the future protection of themselves and their family into an unregulated and financially unsecured scheme is beyond my ken.

A couple of other things to consider; claims and benefits are submitted to and managed by the EPC committee, if that isn’t open to abuse I don’t know what is.

What deductions are made from the fund by the committee, administrators, trustees, managers? Do we know who is drawing what salaries and how much?

Are audited financial statements for the fund available?

The EPC/LIPS committee are selling an insurance product and managing an investment fund, activities for which they are neither licensed by the Ministry of Economy nor the Central Bank. According to the law of the UAE, they are operating illegally.

Topcover may not be perfect but it is a 1000 times better bet than LIPS. AIU will be around a lot, lot longer paying out claims than the LIPS fund will be.

I think the point is that TopCover are proven frauds, LIPS has yet to be held to account.

by the way, every insurance fund works the same. To be viable they must receive more in premiums than they pay out in claims. So it may mean that LIPS will have to adjust premiums when a claim trend establishes. It doesn't mean it is not viable.

The bit about not being licenced or trained to handle vast sums of money i totally agree with and is a major concern. Open to abuse for sure.

V

Dear I.P.,
I have also been paying into LIPS for some time and have been concerned about accountability etc. I also have concerns about when LIPS will be audited. Also for your interest you will find on the EPC homepage that it states that LIPS will be administered only by the EPC President, Treasurer and the Fund Administrator. Why don't you just write to the director and put your concerns to him, as i will be doing? All of this conjecture and misrepresentation is not conducive to seeking the truth, or is it that you work for the opposition?

At worst Topcover are frauds, and their track record is dreadful. Perhaps IP would like to comment on the way some cases have been handled??? And don't bother just saying that you can't comment on xyz case.

Lips is a new kid on the block, i support it, and yes there is questions, but lets agree with this scheme ya get something back at the end anyhow!!

SyB :zzz:

I see in the latest newletter that the EPC are now distancing themselves from LIPS.

QUOTE 'We would like to advise all LIPS members that the EPC has nothing to do with the LIPS Scheme aside from publishing it on the EPC website. All enquiries should be directed to ....'

Interesting that one of the Directors is also the EPC Chairman.

EPC can distance themselves all they like, but as long as MP is on both comittees and it is advertised through EPC, a significant conflict of interest exists and will be a problem should EPC's independence ever need to be tested in court. And remember as paid up members of a club, it is likely that all members will also be liable if there is a major financial problem.

V

Come on Vorsicht that is a long bow to draw, members of EPC don't have a finacial liability with LIPS, where do you get that from. LIPS is a trust structure, the liability rests with the trust. I agree with you about the handling of large sums of money but suggest anyone who has a concern contact the administrators. Insurance companies have one aim...never make a pay out, they employ many lawyers to find ways to avoid it and AIU are no different.

Top Cover may not be perfect but at least it has a history. The EPC LIPS scheme (or is it MP's LIPS scheme) is untested. I didn't leave Top Cover to join the EPC LIPS as Top Cover is legally sold and managed by professionals while LIPS ... ?????

I know that volunteers run the EPC committee and we owe them a debt of gratitude for the thankless job they do. However, I fear that they have been hoodwinked into promoting LIPS without sufficient research or Due Diligence.

Take care that this doesn't bite us all on the proverbial ass.

A bit of a concern to us at Gulf Air also then, since we also use Top Cover. :eek:

What is the legal status of the EPC? Since my club membership is deducted from my salary, Is the club part of EK?

Flying Spag Monster
 

Yes it is a long bow to draw, but remember this is a country where a flight attendant was jailed because her husband was found dead in the bath. She found him there after returning from a layover. The fact that she was verifiably not in the country at time of death was not considered.

She was released at a later date.

Remember also that businessmen, who had committed no crime whatsoever, have been held because someone they were associated with committed a crime.

All i am saying is that there is more than a casual link between the EPC and LIPS. Who knows how a Dubai court would view it.

V

Top Cover .. there is only one and ...
 

You have all been had ... eheh:}

EPC distances itself from LIPS
 

Interesting, especially as the LIPS sites states:

3.1 The Scheme shall be administered by the Committee which shall be appointed by EPCL and, unless determined otherwise by EPCL, shall be made up of the EPC President, Treasurer and the Scheme Administrator. The Committee which shall act for and on behalf of EPCL shall be entitled to reasonable remuneration for its services, such remuneration and any expenses reasonably incurred shall be recoverable from the assets of the Scheme.

EPC distances itself from LIPS
 

I see on the EPC website they state -

"The EPC and the Committee of the EPC has NOTHING - Repeat NOTHING - to do with LIPS. "

So why is the EPC President also on the scheme administration committee? and more importantly why is he also a director of EPCL and receiving a share of the 12 000dhs monthly expenses?

Is it true that EPCL is an abbreviation for a offshore company 'EMIRATES PILOTS CLUB LIMITED' registered in the British Virgin Islands?

So the EPC has NOTHING to do with LIPS do they. Don't be so naive lads.

Well if in fact EPC does have something to do with LIPS, then good. If they manage LIPS as well as they do the EPC, then I am even more confident that LIPS is for me.

I will admit that I got out of TOPCOVER based on my viewpoint of that scheme and then along came LIPS. Having a close relative who is intimately involved in the insurance business, I asked for his advice regarding these matters and to my surprise, he advised me to select LIPS. He subtley admitted that many large insurance companies spend most of their resources recruiting new policy holders, advertising and in litigation. Sadly a good portion of the legal matters deal directly with verifying and often times declining or at least minimizing pay outs.

It is just the nature of the business.

So now I have experienced 2 strikes against large insurance companies. One being the devious technique of ignoring a family members claim after the death of their spouse (hoping that someone of the age of 80 might not be aware enough to persistently follow through with matters during a traumatic time in their life) and also an insiders true viewpoint of the very business for which he is involved.

This is not to say that LIPS will be any different, but I'm inclined to believe that there is far more chances of it.
Once again I will reiterate that this is just my personal experiences with large insurance companies and I am not in any way criticizing someone for selecting TOPCOVER.

LIPS
 

I have been contributing to LIPS for a little while now. And something concerns me.

The scheme has been up and running for well over a year now and the company announces a balance of ONLY one million Dirhams in all that time??

Just basic maths here based on 400 pilots for only one year! 320 by 400 per month by 12 equals 1536000 aed per year so whats happened? unless that was a typo on the EPC website.

Has the investment choice for the funds gone AURY?? last time i checked most markets on a major bull run!! so half a million down in the pot?? What gives?:confused: