Terms of use

Please read this before you rely on anything on this site. It is short, and it matters.

CoverGuide is a free consumer information service for people in South Africa who are trying to understand funeral cover, work out whether policies overlap, and take the next step after a claim is rejected or reduced. By using this site you accept the terms below. Last updated: 29 October 2026.

This is guidance, not legal advice

Nothing on CoverGuide is legal advice, financial advice or insurance advice. We are not a law firm, an attorney, an insurer, a broker, a financial services provider, a regulator or an ombud. Using this site does not create an attorney-client or advisory relationship of any kind, and no one here is acting as your representative.

What you read here is general guidance, written in plain language, to help you ask better questions and find the right office. It is not an opinion about your policy, your claim or your rights, because we have not seen your policy, your claim file or your correspondence, and we cannot. Your situation turns on the exact wording of your contract and on facts that only you and your insurer hold.

If a decision matters to you — a rejected claim, a large amount, a deadline, a dispute about disclosure — get advice from a qualified attorney or a registered financial adviser, or take it to the relevant ombud. Those routes are free or low-cost, and we list them on the complaints contacts page.

Where our information comes from

The guidance on this site is compiled from publicly available resources found online: legislation and regulations, published regulator and ombud material, and secondary explanations of them. We link to those sources on the sources page so that you can read them yourself.

Compiling public material is not the same as verifying it. Law changes, regulators issue new guidance, amounts are adjusted, documents are superseded, and a secondary summary can be wrong or out of date even when the original was right. Some of what you read here may describe a proposal that has not become law — where we know that, we say so, but you should confirm the current status yourself. We do not warrant that anything on this site is accurate, complete, current or applicable to you.

CoverGuide is an information prototype. Its legal content has not been through a formal South African legal review.

Do your own due diligence

Treat this site as a starting point and a prompt for questions — not as the last word, and not as a substitute for reading your own documents or speaking to the people who hold them. Before you act on anything here:

• Read your own policy schedule and terms, including exclusions, waiting periods and limits.
• Confirm the facts with your insurer or broker in writing, and keep their reply.
• Check any legal position against the official source, or with an attorney.
• Check deadlines yourself. A missed deadline can end a complaint or a court claim, and we cannot calculate yours.

Decisions about your cover and your claim are yours. We are not responsible for what you decide, and this platform should not stand in for your own verification.

What the tools do and do not do

The checker organises the policy details that you type in. It does not read your policies, contact your insurer, look anything up, or verify a single figure. Specifically:

• It cannot tell you whether a claim will pay, or must pay. Only your insurer, an ombud or a court can decide that.
• Cover you list is cover you believe you have. It is not a confirmed payout. A lapsed policy, an unpaid premium, a waiting period or an eligibility rule can change the outcome.
• Matching insurer names is text matching, not identity verification. The same name may be used by different legal entities, and one insurer may trade under several names. A repeated name is a reason to ask a question, not proof that cover is wasted or invalid.
• We publish a register of what provider documents say about who underwrites particular products. That is research about documents, not about your policy. It cannot tell you which company insured you, it is not a list of every provider, and a shared underwriter does not create a shared limit or make cover duplicate or invalid. Your policy schedule decides your position.
• We apply no automatic statutory or contractual payout cap. Any combined limit shown is one you told us your insurer confirmed.
• A blank amount means unknown, not zero. An incomplete comparison cannot reassure you.
• Letters are editable drafts prepared from templates. Nothing is sent, submitted or lodged on your behalf, ever. You send them yourself, after you have checked them.

Nothing in the tools is a recommendation to cancel, change, buy or keep an insurance product. Cancelling cover can leave your family unprotected, and that decision needs proper advice.

Outside links and listed offices

We link to insurers, regulators, ombuds and other websites for your convenience. We do not control them, and we are not responsible for their content, their accuracy, their availability, or how they handle your information. A link is not an endorsement.

Statutory ombuds and regulators are listed because they are the correct route, and we are not paid to send you to them. Any paid listing is labelled as one and never appears above a statutory office. See Privacy & your data.

Your information

Policy details and letter drafts stay in your browser tab and are not sent to us. The newsletter is optional and separate from the tools. How we handle the little we do collect is set out in full on the Privacy & your data page, which forms part of these terms.

Using the site fairly

Please use CoverGuide for your own or your family’s purposes. Do not use it to advise other people as though it were professional advice, do not present our content as your own or as verified legal material, and do not attempt to disrupt, scrape at scale, overload or break into the site. We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of the site at any time.

The content, wording and design of this site belong to CoverGuide. You are welcome to read, print and share pages for personal, non-commercial use, with the source kept intact.

Our responsibility

We offer this site free of charge and in good faith, but we provide it as it is, without warranties of any kind. To the fullest extent the law allows, CoverGuide and the people behind it are not liable for any loss, damage, cost or missed opportunity arising from your use of this site, or from anything you did or did not do because of it — including a rejected claim, a lapsed policy, a missed deadline, a lost complaint, or an amount you did not receive.

Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under South African law, including the Consumer Protection Act, that cannot lawfully be limited.

Changes and governing law

We may update these terms as the site develops. The date at the top shows when they last changed, and continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated version.

These terms are governed by South African law, and the courts of South Africa have jurisdiction.

Reaching us

Questions about these terms can be sent by replying to any message we send you, or through the contact routes described on the Privacy & your data page. We cannot answer questions about your specific policy or claim — your insurer, an attorney or an ombud can.