{"id":31510,"date":"2015-11-03T17:17:31","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T07:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=31510"},"modified":"2016-03-07T09:37:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T22:37:57","slug":"life-insurance-advice-ranks-low-on-fos-radar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2015\/11\/03\/life-insurance-advice-ranks-low-on-fos-radar\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Insurance Advice Ranks Low on FOS Radar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life insurance disputes account for around 5% of all disputes taken to the Financial Ombudsman Service<\/strong> (FOS), well behind credit and general insurance disputes and roughly on par with investments disputes.<\/p>\n

The number of disputes was released by FOS as part of its annual report which showed that the complaints resolution scheme received 31,895 disputes in the 2014-15 reporting period, of which 23,344 actually fell into the jurisdiction of FOS.<\/p>\n

Of this latter number, 1,227 disputes related to life insurance compared with 1,332 for investments, 6,780 for general insurance and 12,601 for credit disputes.<\/p>\n

Despite the relative low numbers for life insurance disputes FOS said the number has risen by 6% from last year due to a 20% increase in the number of disputes linked to non-income stream risk products, mainly in the areas of total and permanent disability and term life insurance.<\/p>\n

Denial of claims was the most common reason consumers raised a dispute with FOS, at 32% of disputes, but was marginally higher in income stream risk disputes at 37% than non-income stream risk disputes at 26%.<\/p>\n

Of continuing concern is the failure of FSPs to use correct policy provisions and to rely on more recent versions with less beneficial terms.<\/h6>\n

Of the 677 disputes relating to income stream risk products, more than 80% involved income protection insurance, and centred around the decision of a financial services provider (FSP) to deny a claim.<\/p>\n

FOS said a decision to deny a claim \u201c… remains a prevalent complaint for income protection insurance\u201d accounting for 59% of disputes relating to income stream risk products.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin these disputes, the applicants complained that the FSP was not willing to accept information provided in support of claims without corroborating evidence,\u201d FOS stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cComplaints about claim amounts and incorrect premiums together with disputes over denial of claim and claim handling delays were key themes associated with income protection insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf continuing concern is the failure of FSPs to use correct policy provisions and to rely on more recent versions with less beneficial terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the area of non-income stream risk half of the 550 disputes related to a decision made by a FSP while only 7% related to advice around the insurance product.<\/p>\n

One third of those cases were related to total and permanent disability insurance with denial of claim once again ranking as the top reason for lodging a dispute followed by delays in claim handling.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life insurance disputes account for around 5% of all disputes taken to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), well behind credit and general insurance disputes and roughly on par with investments disputes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4247],"class_list":["post-31510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-compliance-regulation","tag-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}