{"id":319820,"date":"2019-05-28T13:57:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T11:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=319820"},"modified":"2019-05-28T13:57:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T11:57:28","slug":"these-are-the-most-complained-about-life-insurers-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/319820\/these-are-the-most-complained-about-life-insurers-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"These are the most complained about life insurers in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ombudsman for Long-term Insurers (OLTI) has published its annual report for 2018, showing which insurance companies have drawn the most complaints from their customers.<\/p>\n

The OLTI received 11,768 written requests for assistance in 2018 – an increase of 1,000 requests compared to the 10,768 in 2017.<\/p>\n

“Of those requests, 5,978 were chargeable complaints which fell within our jurisdiction \u2013 this was an increase of 10% compared to the 5,435 chargeable complaints received in 2017,\u201d ombudsman, Ron McLaren said.<\/p>\n

There were more complaints about funeral benefits than any other type of benefit, he said.<\/p>\n

The ombud settled 91% of complaints within the year, with as many as 31.5% of the cases resolved partially or wholly in favour of the complainants.<\/p>\n

Payments in lump sums to the value of R185.8 million were recovered for complainants. Compensation of R632,737 was awarded to 160 complainants for poor service by insurers, the ombud said.<\/p>\n

McLaren noted that there is increasing awareness among insurance customers that they can complain about poor service levels, “although the requests are not articulated so explicitly,” he said.<\/p>\n

He added, however, that there was a common misconception by complainants that the amount\u00a0 should equal the policy benefit in question.<\/p>\n

“Complainants also often express the misguided wish that the insurer should be punished by the compensation award,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said that despite Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) being part of insurance regulation, some insurers demonstrate the opposite.<\/p>\n

Most complained about insurers<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the OLTI data, Hollard Life Assurance received the most complaints in 2018, with 868 cases lodged, representing 14.5% of the total. This was followed by Old Mutual Life Assurance (855), Liberty Group (606) and Metropolitan Life (410).<\/p>\n

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The number of complaints is often tied closely to the number of customers each company has – thus another metric to take into consideration is the percentage of cases where the ombud ruled in favour of customers or complainants.<\/p>\n

Here, among groups that received a lot of complaints (over 100), Hollard still emerged at the top of the list.<\/p>\n

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The full list of long term insurers can be found on pages 30 and 31 in the report embedded below:<\/p>\n

Ombudsman for long term insurance 2018<\/a> by BusinessTech<\/a> on Scribd<\/p>\n