In March 2019 ASIC and APRA released for the first time statistics on the payout rates of individual insurers for the 12 month period ending 30 June 2018. Updated data was subsequently released in June 2019 for the 12 month period ending 31 December 2018.
For each life insurance company the statistics show:
- – Average claims accepted rate i.e. the percentage of claims an insurer accepted for payment out of all claims that were decided, and
- – Average claim time in months that it took for an insurer to decide whether or not to accept a claim.
Using the data for insurance policies taken out through a financial adviser/broker, Insurance Watch has collated the statistics across the four product types to rank companies based on their average deviation from the industry claims acceptance rates.
The table below shows the overall ranking of insurers for claims acceptance from best (1st) to worst (10th).
Best Claims Paying Life Insurance Companies in 2018
| Claims Ranking |
Life Insurance Company |
| 1 |
MLC |
| 2 |
Suncorp/Asteron |
| 3 |
AMP |
| 4 |
Zurich |
| 5 |
AIA |
| 6 |
ClearView |
| 7 |
CommInsure |
| 8 |
Westpac/BT |
| 9 |
TAL |
| 10 |
OnePath |
More information about each of these insurers can be found at Compare Life Insurance Companies and policy benefits and premiums can be viewed using Compare Quotes Online.
The claims statistics for each individual insurer is shown in the graphs below. Where no result is shown for an insurer the number of claims was too small to provide a reliable result.
Life Insurance Claims Statistics –
For life insurance claims the acceptance rate for the industry as a whole was 96.3%. CommInsure had the lowest claims acceptance rate of 88.5% and TAL the highest acceptance rate of 98.4%.
The average time for a life insurance claim to be accepted was 3.1 months, however there was significant variation between insurers with the fastest being TAL at 0.9 month on average and the slowest being AMP at 5.4 months.
TPD Insurance Claims Statistics –
For TPD insurance claims the acceptance rate for the industry as a whole was 86.6%. TAL had the lowest claims acceptance rate of 70.6% and AMP the highest acceptance rate of 91.6%.
The average time for a TPD insurance claim to be accepted was 8.2 months, however there was significant variation between insurers with the fastest being Suncorp/Asteron at 4.6 months on average and the slowest being AMP at 9.6 months.
Trauma Insurance Claims Statistics –
For Trauma insurance claims the acceptance rate for the industry as a whole was 86.6%. AMP had the lowest claims acceptance rate of 83.4% and ClearView the highest acceptance rate of 93.0%.
The average time for a Trauma insurance claim to be accepted was 1.9 months, with the fastest being ClearView at 1.2 months and the slowest being AMP at 2.8 months.
Income Protection Claims Statistics –
For Income Protection insurance claims the acceptance rate for the industry as a whole was 95.1%. ClearView had the lowest claims acceptance rate of 90.3% and Zurich the highest acceptance rate of 97.0%.
The average time for an Income Protection insurance claim to be accepted was 1.6 months, with the fastest being MLC at 0.9 months and the slowest being AMP at 2.4 months.
ASIC notes in its report that under the Life Insurance Code of Practice insurers should make their initial decision within 2 months of a claim for income protection and within 6 months for other cover types.
To compare policies offered by the above insurance companies go to Compare Quotes Online Now
Which insurers have the most claims disputes?
In 2017/2018 the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) handled 22,962 disputes related to financial services. Of these, only 4% were related to life insurance including TPD, Trauma and income protection insurance. The biggest source of disputes was Credit (e.g. loans and mortgages) accounting for 43% of the total, followed by General insurance (e.g. car and home) at 32%.
ASIC and APRA have also released updated claims dispute statistics on an individual insurance company basis for the year ending 31 December 2018. These statistics include disputes lodged with an insurer, an external dispute resolution scheme like FOS or AFCA, or a Court or Tribunal. The reasons for these disputes include dissatisfaction with claims decisions, amount received or the claims process.
The absolute number of disputes need to be viewed relative to the number of lives insured by that insurer. Therefore the data from ASIC below shows for each insurer the number of disputes for every 100,000 people insured (data is for policies taken out through financial advisers/brokers). On this adjusted basis CommInsure have the highest number of disputes for Life and Trauma policies, while OnePath has the highest number of disputes for TPD policies and AMP the highest number of disputes for Income Protection policies.
What is the claims experience of other industry players?
Over time Insurance Watch has helped many of its customers to make successful claims on their policies. In other parts of the website we provide examples of these Life Insurance, Trauma and Income Protection claims. In our experience very few claims are declined, although non disclosure can put clients at risk. As every claim is different in its circumstances it is difficult to generalize these results across insurers.
A recent survey of advisers tried to obtain an industry wide perspective of the relative claims performance of insurance companies. The survey results ranked insurers according to adviser perceptions of how the companies managed claims. However as the claims experience of each adviser may be limited the results are likely to be subjective rather than based on factual data.
What is the experience of customers who have submitted claims?
Customer reviews have been left on our website by over 800 holders of Life, TPD, Trauma and Income Protection policies. From these we can learn about the claims experiences of individuals – both good and bad. But again we can’t know the full circumstances behind each claim (e.g. were these superannuation or retail policies, was non-disclosure involved etc) or how indicative these particular claims are of an insurer’s overall performance.
What we do know is that good news stories often don’t often receive much publicity. So we have collected claims videos from various insurers telling the moving stories of clients who have needed to make a claim and how this has made a difference to their lives and the lives of their families.
You can watch videos of their real life stories below:
Life Insurance and TPD Claims Stories
Trauma / Critical Illness Claims Stories
Income Protection Claims Stories
What do the detailed claims statistics from the insurance companies show?
Below we have collated the claims statistics from all the companies we cover including their latest published document giving a breakdown of claims paid.
The absolute dollar value of claims paid must be viewed in the context of the size of each insurer and their premiums in force. Equally the mix of claims for each insurer will be influenced by the composition of their customers. For example, each insurer has a different mix of Life/TPD/Trauma/Income Protection insurance policies, group/super versus individual/retail policies, policyholder ages and occupations.
What these statistics DO show is that claims get paid and in very large numbers – the total annual claims paid by the insurance companies listed below add up to over $7.5 Billion. This should give confidence to buyers of insurance policies that help will be there when they need it the most.
Compare the premiums and benefits offered by these companies at Compare Quotes Online
The number one question we get asked at Insurance Watch is “Do life insurance companies really pay claims?”. In order to address this question we have gathered together all in one place insurance claims statistics and information from a variety of sources.
