{"id":50725,"date":"2020-06-29T16:35:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T06:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=50725"},"modified":"2020-07-14T17:39:44","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T07:39:44","slug":"insurers-criticised-over-life-code-obligations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2020\/06\/29\/insurers-criticised-over-life-code-obligations\/","title":{"rendered":"Insurers Criticised Over Life Code Obligations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A number of insurers, especially the larger life companies, have been called on to strengthen their commitment to the <a href=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/200629-FSC-Life-Code-of-Practice.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Life Insurance Code of Practice<\/a>, following comments that they have not been taking their Code obligations seriously.<\/p>\n<p>This call has been made by <strong>Anne Brown<\/strong>, independent Chair of the <a href=\"https:\/\/lifeccc.org.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Life Code Compliance Committee<\/a>, whose task it is to monitor and enforce the FSC&#8217;s Life Insurance Code of Practice.<\/p>\n<p>In its <a href=\"https:\/\/lifeccc.org.au\/app\/uploads\/2020\/06\/LifeCCC_ADCP-2018-19_Report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2018-19 Annual Industry Data and Compliance Report<\/a>, released last week, the Compliance Committee took aim at a number of key areas which it says the life companies must address. These areas span issues associated with the integrity of the reporting provided, cultural and training issues, claims breach reporting and other claims related complaints issues.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_50732\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50732\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/Anne-Brown.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-50732\" src=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/Anne-Brown.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-50732\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Life Code Committee Chair, Anne Brown &#8230;insurers need to strengthen commitment to their Code of Practice<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In a statement, the Committee noted its key findings included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Larger subscribers (life companies) need to improve their data quality assurance and reporting, while smaller insurers generally provided high-quality data<\/li>\n<li>The corporate culture of many subscribers appears not to align with the standards set out in the Code, although recent improvements have been noted.<\/li>\n<li>The effectiveness of companies\u2019 staff training programmes and monitoring frameworks is questionable, as evidenced by the large volume of breaches caused by human error<\/li>\n<li>The under-reporting of breaches relating to claims decision timeframes indicates that insurers lack sufficient processes for recording and reporting such breaches<\/li>\n<li>Increases in claims-related complaints and claims handling timeframes show that insurers need to improve their claims management processes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;self-regulation is a privilege<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In an observation that also acts as a potential warning to the life companies, Brown stressed that self-regulation is a privilege and with that privilege comes &#8220;&#8230;an obligation to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place to comply with the Code&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Click the image to read the 2018-19 Annual Industry Data and Compliance Report&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lifeccc.org.au\/app\/uploads\/2020\/06\/LifeCCC_ADCP-2018-19_Report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-50746\" src=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/200629-LCCC-Report-722x1024.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"405\" height=\"574\" srcset=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/200629-LCCC-Report-722x1024.png 722w, https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/200629-LCCC-Report-211x300.png 211w, https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/200629-LCCC-Report-768x1090.png 768w, https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/200629-LCCC-Report-696x988.png 696w, https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/200629-LCCC-Report-296x420.png 296w, https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/06\/200629-LCCC-Report.png 947w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 405px) 100vw, 405px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A number of insurers, especially the larger life companies, have been called on to strengthen their commitment to the Life Insurance Code of Practice, following comments that they have not been taking their Code obligations seriously. This call has been made by Anne Brown, independent Chair of the Life Code Compliance Committee, whose task it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-compliance-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50725","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=50725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}