FCVic has made a submission to the General Insurance Code Governance Committee’s consultation on its 2024-25 Monitoring and Compliance Priorities.

The submission drew on the experiences and insights of disaster recovery financial counsellors, and relate to the Code Part 9: Supporting customers experiencing vulnerability; Part 8: Making a Claim, and Part 12: Access to information.

Financial counsellors have reported to FCVic on widespread poor practice by insurers, specifically around treatment of vulnerability of customers and transparency during claims processes. The failure of Code subscribers to recognise and appropriately support customers following these types of extreme events has exacerbated insurance customers’ distress and impeded their recovery. This places insurers at risk of causing additional harm and detriment to their customers.

Our submission makes a number of recommendations to the Code Governance Committee to prioritise these parts of the Code, and to work with the financial counselling sector to improve insurer practices.