Consumer Information

Overseas travel insureance

Insurance situation arising from travel
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Buying insurance

Cover your property losses
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Guidelines for resolving disputes

This is how member companies resolve disputes.
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Commercial insurance

Insure against businessesdisruption
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Motor insurance

Motor vehicle insurance can cover you against accidental loss or damage to your vehicle,
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Personal insurance

The types of cover available under personal insurance
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Marine insurance

Cover for commercial vessels and personal pleasurecraft
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Insurance fraud

An insurance claim is considered fraudulent when it is based on facts that are simply untrue
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The Insurance Claims Register (ICR) was established in February 1999.

The ICR enables insurance companies to check the accuracy of the data submitted with policy applications and claims.

Why set up an insurance claims register?

Because fraud is conservatively costing honest policyholders $65 million a year. The old adage of 'utmost good faith' is no longer working with 15-20% of claimants. The Insurance Claims Register ("ICR") detects and prevents fraud, particularly purposeful non-disclosure, and double dipping at claim time.

How does it work?

The ICR is an electronic register that holds a central record of all claims lodged with participating insurance companies, so that those companies can access a claims history of a client, when underwriting new business and processing claims, for the specific purpose of checking for fraud.

What about privacy issues?

All participating insurers have adjusted their privacy wordings and advised clients that their claims information will be lodged on the ICR. Customers have the right to object to this happening. Insurers equally have the right not to insure customers who object to their claims being held on the register. Ultimately, all participating insurers will have the privacy advice on all proposals and renewals, as well as claim forms. It is expected that agreement to having your claims on the ICR will be a condition of doing business with a participating insurer.

Those customers who object to their claims being held on the ICR will probably need to insure with a company who is not a participant of the ICR.

If at claim time a customer objects to their claim information being held on the ICR, because the privacy advice was not on the proposal or renewal form, the insurance company will not place the claim information on the ICR.

All customers who have claims on the ICR have the right to access the information held about them at any time, and seek changes to that information if it is warranted.

In terms of security of information, only participating insurers are able to access the ICR, and security passwords are allocated by companies so that only authorised personnel have access to the ICR. The ICR is able to tell who are accessing the register and what types of enquiries are being made, via electronic footprints.

What is held on the ICR?

Details include name, address, date of birth etc., and details about the claim. Claim details include insurer, type of claim, date of claim, amount of claim and status of claim. Insurers need access to factual claim information and enough identifying information about the claimant to make sure that they do not get confused with another 'Joe Brown'.

Is the ICR going to slow the claim process?

No, we think it will speed it up. The ICR enables an insurer to establish very quickly and accurately (as the claim numbers increase) whether a claim needs further investigation or not. Those claims that have normally been investigated will continue to be investigated.

With regard to having the claims register available at underwriting time, insurers are better able to spot non-disclosure at this stage of the process and less likely to try and underwrite at the time of a claim. This means the problem of non-disclosure at claim time is minimised considerably.

 

 

 

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