Congratulations to the ICA and those that have signed up to the 2014 Code of Practice
A big thumbs up to the ICA’s new Code of Practice
Fifty four (54) insurers and 97 Underwriting Agencies and or Claims Administrators have signed up from yesterday, 1 July 2014 to a revised Code of Practice. #ica #insurance
To see who is on the list, and just as important who is not, can be found here.
What is not clear with some of the brands is whether they are bound by their parent or have elected not to sign up to the Code.
What is important about this code is that stronger consumer rights and more powerful sanctions against insurers which breach the code are contained in this new Code.
What was lacking before appears now to be addressed with a more powerful and now independent governance committee will have the power to bring insurers into line over breaches in the Code, pushing that they rectify breaches with corrective advertising and holding them accountable to a timeframe.
In extreme cases, this independent committee will have the power to issue a report on a particular insurer and make it public that they have breached the code.
Like most in our industry I am extremely proud of what insurance has done and continues to do for our economy and the insuring public. I wish we did not need this sort of Code but the reality is that we do. If you recall, I called for an ethics committee in a post on this blog back in January 2014. Refer here.
I therefore congratulate the ICA for this positive initiative and hope that it is an important step in ensuring contract certainty, that is policies actually covering what they say they do and not having it at the insurers whim, which in the case of some insurers means it is never granted, and stamping out of some of the, thankfully rare, cases of down right unconscionable behaviour.
My only concern is that the words are converted to practice. I hope to God that I am not revisiting this and retracting this post saying that it was all lip service to avoid further government regulation.