riskinfo

The release of the risk store’s 2008 industry claims statisticsforms the basis of our latest riskinfo poll.

We want to know whether your client engagement would be enhanced if you were able to access more information from the life companies that highlights the nature and extent of claims paid to Australians.

There is an almost universal lament within the insurance community that the Australian public believes the life insurance industry simply does not pay claims, or at least does not pay enough.  It is an excuse used often when clients and prospective clients deal with financial advisers and an attitude that also discourages many advisers.

… the challenge for advisers and the industry is to have that positive  message understood and absorbed by the consumer

The opposite is the case, as demonstrated by the risk store’s 2008 claims statistics, and IFSA’s latest industry claims report (see riskinfo article IFSA Releases Results of Claims Experience Investigation).  But the challenge for advisers and the industry is to have that positive  message understood and absorbed by the consumer. 

Traditionally, life companies have been reluctant to release information about their claims experience.  The reasons are serious and practical - the more detail an insurer releases about its claims history, the better chance there is of its competitors and others determining its underlying profitability when combining claims data with statutory (public) reporting required by APRA.  In other words, the information is ‘market sensitive’.

But in recent years, the tide had begun to turn.  It’s turning slowly, but it’s turning, with a number of insurers releasing more and more detail about the make-up of their claims book, such as the breakdown of trauma events, the overall dollar value and proportion of claims per event and category, as well as average claims paid per insurance category (ie Death, TPD, Trauma, Income Protection).

In the United Kingdom, life companies are far more ‘generous’ than their Australian counterparts in terms of the amount of detail they release for public consumption.  This has been due, in part, to the adverse and biased electronic media campaigns in the early part of this decade  that targeted the life companies as un-caring institutions who found any excuse to decline a valid claim.

Ironically, the open-ness of the information that is now availabe in the UK has been credited, again in part, with a resurgent and growing book of life insurance policies in that country.

But on a day to day level, would access to more information about claims statistics be of value to you in your dealings with your clients?  Or do you believe that more access to claims information from the life companies will make little to no difference to the way you conduct and manage your client relationships?

There are many more points of view and cases that can be made, both for and against this question, and we encourage you to have your say in our Comments forum at the end of this article.

So, have your say and make your voice heard.

Vote Now!