The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Life Code Compliance Committee have all recently released reports on the life insurance sector.
The Life Code Compliance Committee, which oversees the Life Insurance Code of Practice, has published the Life Code Compliance Committee’s Annual Industry Data and Compliance Report for the period 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018.
Most complaints were about issues related to the consumer’s policy (48%) or a claim (20%).
Subscribers reported 164 systemic breach events resulting in multiple breaches of a Code section and nearly 8,000 isolated breaches, each affecting a single consumer.
The systemic breaches of the code mainly related to policy changes and cancellation rights, followed by breaches of sales practices and advertising, complaints and disputes, policy design and disclosure.
The individual breaches were mainly caused by human error or inadequate resourcing.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) have released a series of publications and an online tool allowing policyholders – for the first time – to compare life insurers’ performance in handling claims and disputes.
The publications reflect the agencies’ different roles, with APRA focused on protecting policyholders by ensuring the soundness and stability of institutions, and ASIC responsible for regulating conduct, disclosure and consumer outcomes.
• APRA has released its inaugural Life Insurance Claims and Disputes Statistics publication, with more than 22,000 data points from 20 insurers including claims and disputes information across all cover types and distribution channels. The data was collected under APRA’s new reporting standard LRS 750 Claims and Disputes, which came into effect in October 2018.
• ASIC’s MoneySmart life insurance claims comparison tool helps consumers to make more informed decisions by showing each insurer’s claims-acceptance rates, average claim time, the number of claims-related disputes and policy cancellation rates. The data shows that 92 per cent of overall claims are paid in the first instance, and breaks down consumer outcomes according to cover type and distribution channels.
