The Private Health Insurance Administration Council (PHIAC) is an independent Statutory Authority that regulates the private health insurance industry.
PHIAC has announced that it will restructure to bring a stronger focus to its statutory role of protecting the interests of consumers of private health insurance, including to make sure it can deal quickly and effectively in the (unlikely) event that there is a major prudential crisis within the PHI industry.
PHIAC will be rolling out a suite of prudential standards.
Capital standards have already been reviewed.
A draft standard on Corporate Governance is currently circulating within the industry for comment by 6 March 2009, with an intended commencement date in June 2009.
The draft standard includes rules on:
- board composition;
- independence of directors;
- chairperson;
- residency of directors;
- director associates of shareholders;
- board charter;
- delegation;
- board policies;
- board performance;
- board renewal;
- board audit committee;
- conflicts of interest;
- internal audit.
It is clear that health funds will be coming under greater regulation and that PHIAC expects boards to be fully involved and responsible for their organisations.
Bright Law specialise in advising not-for-profit companies and have had experience with these types of standards for listed companies (supervised by ASX) and financial institutions (ADI’s) and insurers (supervised by APRA).
We have have produced a 52 page Toolkit to help private health funds implement the governance standards.
The Toolkit explains:
- what corporate governance means
- what your board needs to do
- what policies and documents you need to prepare
- constitution changes
- corporate governance reporting
- board succession
Call David Jacobson on 07 3878 5098 if you’d like to discuss issues that concern you.
