The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has called on the Financial Services Council (FSC) to produce a simpler and more easily understood version of its Life Insurance Code of Practice, stating it would take the Code into account when making determinations in life insurance disputes.<\/p>\n
FOS made the call as part of its submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee Inquiry into the life insurance industry in which it stated it supported the work done by the FSC in its first iteration of the Code but the second iteration should be easier for consumers to read and understand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FSC Code should simply state each standard, how it should be met and what happens if it is not met,\u201d the submission stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach section of the FSC Code should begin with a commitment to fair service and treatment of consumers throughout the life cycle of an insurance product.\u201d<\/p>\n
FOS also stated the Code should commit subscribers to transparent conduct at all times and include a framework for the monitoring of compliance of subscribers against the Code\u2019s standards and key components.<\/p>\n
\u201cSubscribers should also be held accountable against the \u2018key code promises\u2019 published on the FSC website. These promises should be considered part of the obligations that are monitored and enforced by the Life Code Compliance Committee,\u201d FOS stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cFOS will take the key code promises into account when making decisions relating to conduct of a subscriber after their transition to the code.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ombudsman also expressed concern around efforts to introduce standardised medical definitions stating the Code\u2019s current position of applying those definitions only to life insurance products currently on sale created a substantial carve-out in the Code.<\/p>\n
FOS said this approach detracted from the effectiveness of the Code and it had \u201c\u2026a real concern that consumers may be misled to expect that certain events or medical conditions are covered by a policy when they are not\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has called on the Financial Services Council (FSC) to produce a simpler and more easily understood version of its Life Insurance Code of Practice, stating it would take the Code into account when making determinations in life insurance disputes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8294,8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-claims","category-compliance-regulation","category-products"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35765","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=35765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}