Life Matters<\/a>, said lawyers and solicitors had become involved in claims due to many insured people believing their claim would be denied after becoming uncertain of life insurers, following recent media reports.<\/p>\nLane, who has worked in the life insurance industry for the 15 years, including the last eight\u00a0years in claims services for firms including TAL and Asteron, said the small number of bad claim stories had made people sceptical of insurers, and legal representatives had begun to act as a claims support service.<\/p>\n
Lane said the legal representatives had not shortened the process and often cost those with insurance policies more time and money than if they had let the claim progress naturally.<\/p>\n
\u201cSolicitors can delay the claims process by up to 12 months…”<\/h6>\n
\u201cSolicitors can delay the claims process by up to 12 months while we have been able to expedite claims by just having a conversation with the insurers,\u201d Lane said, adding that lawyers advertising \u2018no fees\u2019 did not reflect other costs which often equated to a sizable percentage of a claim payment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen solicitors charging up to 40% of a claim amount because while they may not charge fees they charge for disbursements and these depend on the work done while pursuing the claim,\u201d Lane said.<\/p>\n
By comparison, Life Matters charges $1,000 for an income protection claim and 3% of any lump sum claim – if they were accepted, with Lane stating consumers needed a back-to-basics service to reduce confusion around claims.<\/p>\n
Lane said this confusion had arisen because of the complex and lengthy processes insurers had created around claims which were unlikely to be remedied by industry created claims services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese processes do need to be streamlined as they can be confusing for people not familiar with insurance and claims and it may appear that the insurer is not thinking about the customer at the end of the process,\u201d Lane said.<\/p>\n
“…if consumers see an industry based claims assistance service run by insurers, all they will see is the insurers…”<\/h6>\n
\u201cThird party services can assist but if consumers see an industry based claims assistance service run by insurers, all they will see is the insurers and the perceived problems with claims.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lane\u2019s call for legal representatives to be less involved adds to that of Financial Rights Legal Centre Principal Solicitor,\u00a0Alexandra Kelly<\/strong> who stated at last month\u2019s Financial Services Council Life Insurance Conference that lawyers had created an extra layer of assistance but had not made insurance claims less difficult.<\/p>\n\u201cThe focus should be on simplifying the claims process and everyone should be achieving that, instead of adding on additional costs or confusion for a consumer as to what is the role of that party? Are they an advocate? Are they an information provider? Who is going to fund them?,\u201d Kelly\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe claims process should be an in-house process that should be so simple that anyone can do it. We should not be at the point that a claims form is so difficult and confusing and upsetting that they feel they need support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Efforts to advance insurance claims are being hampered by the involvement of legal representatives but insurer created claims assistance services are also unlikely to win over consumers, a claims management advocate has stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8294,5],"tags":[4247],"class_list":{"0":"post-36795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-claims","8":"category-services","9":"tag-feature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36795","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=36795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}