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%.
What is the 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 750 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 claims statistics 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