South Africa’s most complained-about insurance companies revealed
The South African ombudsman for short-term insurance has released its annual report for 2016, revealing the most complained about short-term insurers in the country.
OSTI said it received 14,916 complaints in 2016 of which 10,175 were registered as formal complaints – an increase of 780 more complaints received in 2016 compared to 2015. 8,631 cases were resolved, it said.
Through its rulings the ombud returned R100 million to consumers. Of this amount, motor vehicle insurance claims made up that vast majority of complaints, and were ultimately paid out R59.2 million to the insured.
The second largest complaint category was with home owner insurance, where R16.03 million was paid out to complainants, followed by commercial insurance complaints (R10.2 million paid out).
Household content insurance was the least complained about, paying only R6.4 million to complainants. The remaining amount was covered by other insurance types.
Most complained about insurers
The ombudsman’s report highlights the insurers who received the most complaints, but stressed that there are some caveats to the data.
Specifically, larger insurers invariably draw a proportionally larger number of complaints.
To give a better picture of how different insurers compare, the OSTI provides various metrics, including the number of complaints it has received per 1,000 complaints received by the insurers themselves.
“Where an insurer receives a high number of complaints to this office per thousand claims, this may be an indicator that claims are dealt with unfairly by the insurer,” the ombud said.
“However, this statistic should be considered in conjunction with the overturn rate – an indicator that the decision of the insurer with respect to a complaint was changed in some respect by this office with some additional benefit to the insured.”
A high overturn rate indicates that an insurer may be treating clients unfairly, the ombud said.
So while Absa Insurance has the highest number of OSTI complaints (10.23% of all complaints received), this is only 5.58 complaints per 1000 received by the insurer.
Additionally, Absa Insurance’s overturn rate is 31.47%, meaning the majority of Absa’s decisions were not overturned.
Here’s how major insurers performed:
- Absa Insurance: 769 complaints, 31.47% overturned
- Hollard: 596 complaints, 33.89% overturned
- Standard Insurance: 538 complaints, 29.55% overturned
- Santam: 553 complaints, 26.4% overturned
- Mutual & Federal: 533 complaints, 24.95% overturned
- Guardrisk: 442 complaints, 48.19% overturned
- MiWay: 416 complaints, 7.69% overturned
- OUTsurance: 404 complaints, 11.63% overturned
The table below breaks down the data among all short-term insurers in South Africa.
Read: The most complained about long-term insurance companies in South Africa in 2017
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