Life insurance claims statistics for 2021 released by APRA show an overall improvement in claims acceptance rates compared to 2020. The average claims acceptance rates for policies distributed by life insurance advisers/brokers have increased year on year, as below: However, the news on claim processing times is...
TAL have announced that they will be closing the BT Protection Plan range to new sales when their acquisition of Westpac Life is completed. This is anticipated to be on 1st August 2022. Niall McConville, TAL’s General Manager of Retail Distribution, stated TAL felt it would...
The 2021 AFA/Plan for Life awards for excellence have been announced, with TAL taking the honours for Life Company of the Year for a staggering fifth year in a row. To win this award TAL had to outperform its competitors across a range of metrics including...
Australia’s largest life insurer is set to get bigger. Today TAL announced that it would be purchasing Westpac Life Insurance Services Limited, the issuer of BT Life Insurance policies (BT Protection Plans). At at 31st December 2020, TAL had premiums in force of $4,523 million and...
In Australia, deaths from COVID-19 have totalled 910 to date. The vast majority, or 93%, of these, were in persons aged over 70. However, the total COVID-19 cases suffered in Australia has been much larger at over 30,000, and of these only 13% were aged over 70. Interestingly,...
APRA and ASIC have released their life insurance claims data for 2020. This means that claim acceptance rates and average claim processing times are now available on an aggregate and individual company basis for the last three years. Claims Paying Trends The same methodology has been used...
The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has released a detailed breakdown of the complaints received up to 30th June 2020. The data can be found on the AFCA Datacube, an online comparative reporting tool, which shows how financial organisations are performing in handling complaints. The tool...
As part of Life Insurance Awareness Week, the Financial Services Council (FSC) has released data providing insights into the causes of most claims. The data, which was analysed by KPMG on behalf of the FSC, shows that during 2019 the life insurance industry paid out more...
On 2nd December 2019 APRA announced it will be intervening in the life insurance market in response to the failure of the industry to take action to stem losses from individual disability income insurance (DII) policies (more commonly known as income protection policies). Why is APRA...