Bank leaves client stranded with a dead body
Nkosinathi Mthethwa* (43) is sad and disappointed that Access Bank Botswana has left him stranded with a dead body.
Mthethwa has been paying premiums to Access Bank for a Monamodi Funeral Policy he took with the bank back in 2021.
The agreement was that through the policy, he would be given P50 000 as cash benefit should anyone he insured die.
On the 15th of this month, his grandmother Gaseyo Kitso (80) died.
Believing that he was financially prepared to give his grandmother a decent send-off, Mthethwa got the shock of his life when the bank informed him after days of waiting that they will not give him what he was promised.
Funeral preparations had to be put on hold for a good two weeks because there was no money for burial.
As the family breadwinner, the entire family looked up to him for answers as he had assured them that all was under control.
Days passed as he tried to convince the bank to give him what was due to him, he even went to the bank to get a proper explanation on why he was not being given the money.
He was told that when he took the policy, he was not supposed to insure his grandmother but only his mother and father.
“I remember telling the person who was assisting me at the time that my father was not in the picture and they suggested that my grandmother can be put in his place. All was settled and I began paying premiums,” the aggrieved man explained.
Further that for his grandmother alone, he paid a premium of P40 per month. But what he is getting is that an error occurred and the bank is now washing its hands from blame.
“I have been on a back and forth with them on the matter. They do not want to accept that they blundered from their end. Last week they called telling me that they have paid back premiums I paid into my account.
“I am not interested in that money. All I want is for the bank to honour what they promised. I am shocked that for this long they failed to pick that I had put two females, my mother and my grandmother in the policy. It was easy to pick it because there is a gender option to tick on the policy document,” he said.
What also saddens him is that sometime last year, he amended his policy to add his wife after they got married.
He believes that this was another opportunity for the bank to have noticed the anomaly in his policy but still nothing was said until he had a funeral to plan.
Realising that the matter might drag for a long time, Mthethwa says they finally laid his grandmother to rest in Pilikwe this past weekend after her body had been in the morgue for two weeks.
They had initially thought the bank would release funds but they have since been forced to look for burial money elsewhere.
When reached for comment, Access Bank Botswana said they are unable to respond on the matter because of the bank's need to respect client confidentiality.
Head of Marketing and Communications Polelo Kilner said, "The Bank implores any aggrieved clients to go through the Bank's internal complaints process as guided by the regulators.
"Should the Bank’s internal complaints process fail to address a customer’s complaint amicably, we advise our clients to go through external complaints resolution processes, as set out by our regulators, the Bank of Botswana (BOB) and the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA)," she said.