In a speech at the ASIC Regulatory Update in Melbourne this week, Mr Kell said the findings of the royal commission so far have highlighted the importance of community expectations and standards to the financial advice industry.
“At ASIC we have seen that an approach from financial services firms based on minimal or technical compliance with the law has, at times, been allowed to override fairness and good customer outcomes,” he said.
“This can only undermine trust.”
Mr Kell gave poor claims outcomes in the life insurance space as an example of this.
“The message for the industry is that you need to ensure that your conduct, and your products, explicitly take into account issues around community expectations and fairness,” he said.
Mr Kell also said increased data collection and transparency on life insurance will help to build confidence and allow ASIC to better understand the markets it regulates and the way individual market participants are performing.
“There has not been readily available public data on life insurance claims outcomes, yet for consumers this is a key measure of the performance of their insurance product,” Mr Kell said.
“What percentage of claims are paid or denied? How does that vary across different product types? How does that vary across insurers? What trends are we seeing over time? ASIC and APRA have therefore embarked on a major project to deliver insurer level data on life claims outcomes.”
What a devious lot Kell & Co at ASIC seem to be. He says this crap with the finger pointed at risk advisers and financial planners, as the culprits behind these denial of claims when previous research has shown that claimants with Retail Insurance receive the highest average payouts, in the quickest amount of time, with the least amount of rejections. Compare that to Group or Direct cover and it’s chalk & cheese.
Has Kell ever made comment on the changes made by Australian Super to their TPD cover or those at SunSuper where there’s generally no lump sum TPD cover and you need to continually re-prove the fact you are disabled to keep them paying benefits to you. I can imagine that if AMP or any of the Big4 Banks had tried this, ASIC, ISA, CHOICE, et al would’ve been up in arms. But these 2? Not a peep from Kell & Co. Hard to get ahead when you have a regulator with blinkers on….
asic please give facts re claim record for A retail insurance B group insurance C tv insurance sales then we can have a true discussion
All said whilst making it almost impossible for a risk adviser to provide advice in a compliant and profitable manner therefore leaving the market open to direct sales made through TV advertisements which have been found to have a lower claim rate. Well done ASIC, you continue to amaze with your incompetence.
I wonder what the out come will be with the Insurers who use TV advertising . Just phone us, do it all over the phone, no blood tests. What is not being said is “underwriting at claim time”. Where is ASIC with that and how many needy claimants will be denied what they thought they had. All this and no adviser to help at that time.
All Asic need to do is listen to experienced reputable advisers (non aligned) and they will get a picture of what is really going on – Insurers (some) are increasingly trying to reject claims and they should be be named. The industry is to good to be ruined by these “Insurers”.
Funnily enough, ASIC apparently don’t think the public have a right to know they are no longer insured by AMP, despite whats said when you call
Geez ASIC are out-of-this-world. All they had to do was talk off the record to risk advisers, and believe us, not the insurers. Then ASIC might have a different view of the value of risk advisers and understand the totality of what we do for our clients, and how we do not charge claim fees, or at least we didn’t up to 1 Jan 18. Risk advisers are like life insurers in one way – the life insurers need to take enough premium to pay a claim after 30 years; advisers need to be profitable enough to be able to service that claimant for no fee at claim. Like Mr Kell’s team of lawyers at ASIC, we need to be paid a fair pay for the business risk we take as advisers. Income protection Claimants in particular cannot pay claim fees if they had to wait 120 days for the first claim cheque ( 90 day Waiting Period) . Yet another LIF stupidity.
And the top of the list is—selling the book to another provider- side stepping the issue.