{"id":33063,"date":"2016-04-19T21:05:11","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T10:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=33063"},"modified":"2025-09-02T11:34:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T01:34:34","slug":"fos-complaints-track-consumer-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2016\/04\/19\/fos-complaints-track-consumer-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"FOS Complaints Track Consumer Interest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Increases in complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) around life insurance reflect consumer interest in the sector and their ability to challenge decisions by insurers, according to a senior FOS staffer.<\/p>\n

\"FOS,<\/a>
FOS, Lead Ombudsman Investments, June Smith<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

FOS, Lead Ombudsman Investments, Dr June Smith<\/strong> said while there had been a 6% growth in life insurance complaints from 2014 to 2015 this was consistent with greater awareness of life insurance, awareness of the ombudsman service and interaction with financial advice.<\/p>\n

According to the 2015 FOS Annual Report the service accepted 1227 complaints related to life insurance of which around half were related to denied claims or other claims handling issues.<\/p>\n

Smith said these complaints were driven by consumer responses to insurers with FOS supportive of the role of financial advice in insurance.<\/p>\n

“…the way in which a financial services provider engages with consumers says much about its culture…”<\/h6>\n

\u201cAccess to quality financial advice is an important matter and FOS works with industry groups to ensure access to financial advice. It is clear that advice has a role in assessing consumer needs and ensuring cover is right for them and dealing with issues around claims and around disclosure to insurers,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

However, Smith urged life insurers to expand their view and look at the whole lifecycle of a product from its development, sale and distribution to the claims and dispute process stating FOS was encouraging peak industry bodies in their development of codes of practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working with industry on the area of disputes and denials and have asked them to look at ethical approaches which are above the law because the way in which a financial services provider engages with consumers says much about its culture,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Increases in complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) around life insurance reflect consumer interest in the sector and their ability to challenge decisions by insurers, according to a senior FOS staffer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8294,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-claims","category-compliance-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33063","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=33063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}