So banks have been ripping us all off with toxic mortgages being sold off the back of a truck, life insurance, superannuation insurance, medical insurance, superannuation fees, credit card fees, ATM fees, late payment fees, opening fake accounts, not closing accounts, spying on staff, sacking whistleblowers, cooking the books, forcing businesses out of business when they need to repay a few derivative bets gone wrong, and the same with farmers, rigging the foreign exchange rate, rigging the stockmarket with wigh speed trading, more ripoffs with LMI and credit enhancement and PI insurance, rig the currency rates, fiddle with spreadsheet formulae, hide their derivative debt with redaction software , or in graphs in annual reports, commit valuation fraud, AND get away with lying to Parliament ...
Have we left out any other rorts and scams?
One can bet their complaints officers and customer advocates earn commission on how low can you go payments when forced to pay compensation...it suits banks to have the
FOS investigate complaints for the FOS have a compensation ceiling of just $3,000 for
non-financial loss and a certain compensation guide geared to offer ‘as low as they go
go’......anything else to add to the list?
Maybe it’s time to backtrack to 2001 ...
Insurers tell life insurance inquiry that doctors are sharing full medical histories
Esther Han
4 March 2017
Life insurance providers have revealed that some doctors are voluntarily sharing their patients' entire medical histories, even though they've only asked for information relevant to a claim.
Commonwealth Bank, ANZ and Westpac-owned BT Financial Group were among the big players that fronted a joint parliamentary inquiry into the life insurance industry in Canberra on Friday.
CBA says it exists to pay insurance claims and enhance the financial well-being of customers. Photo: Michel O'Sullivan
MLC Life Insurance revealed it had started obtaining consent from new customers to access their full medical records from their doctor, though it conceded they probably weren't aware of it.
"Now they probably don't know that they've consented and I can see because it's in the contract that I'm sure many of them don't fully read," said its CEO David Hackett.
Michael Gill's rheumatoid arthritis insurance claim was rejected by CBA's CommInsure. Photo: Nic Wakler
The issues of doctor-patient confidentiality and the concerning trend of insurers' denying claims based on mental health problems were among the focal points of the day.
It became increasingly clear there was great variation in the amount and depth of sensitive medical histories being passed on by doctors to the insurers.
CBA said when it sought medical information to assess a claim, some doctors would provide "targeted responses", while others "transmitted their full files".
Asked by Labor senator Deborah O'Neill whether it was possible it was using a claimant's medical history against them to deny a claim, CBA's managing director of CommInsure Helen Troup said that was "not how I would characterise it ... it's possible, but not likely".
Annabel Spring, CBA's general executive of Wealth Management, spoke at the inquiry into the life insurance industry. Photo: louise kennerley
In regards to whether there was a betrayal of doctor-patient confidentiality, Ms Troup said: "That conversation between the insurance industry and the medical fraternity could improve, and it should improve."
BT's general manager of insurance, Sue Houghton, divulged that some doctors voluntarily transferred entire medical records, even though that wasn't what it requested.
Asked by Senator O'Neill whether the average Australian was aware of such activities, Ms Houghton said: "I don't know if they understand that or not."
Ms Houghton said she recognised the need for new boundaries to be set in regards to what can and can't be retrieved from doctors when assessing insurance claims.
"Our claims philosophy is based on fairness and if someone has a cancer claim and another condition that is not relevant to that cancer claim, we would be very much looking to pay that cancer claim," she said.
ANZ revealed that it pays an "admin" fee to doctors in exchange for medical files.
Its group executive of wealth Alexis George said that she had never seen a claimant's full medical files, only "a few pages of a report".
"It's a very unusual circumstance to see everything, and we don't want to either. We're there to look at the specifics of the claim," she said.
"Our claims philosophy is about settling claims quickly and making the right decision."
MLC said that in the digital age it saw an opportunity to provide real-time updates to customers about the progress of their claims.
APRA’S biggest non-topic
http://www.insurancenews.com.au/local/apras-biggest-non-topic
The big issue surrounding the collapse of HIH – who knew about its troubles and when – won’t be the focus of a major APRA conference in Sydney today. But maybe they should be.
The conference, which will concentrate on APRA’s new solvency requirements and changes to the Insurance Act, is likely to become the forum for plenty of informal discussion on the HIH debacle.
As the horror stories of personal hardship by complainants and policyholders continue to be rolled out in the media, attention is turning to the level of knowledge many people could have had about HIH’s financial difficulties.
APRA has already denied claims by NSW Treasurer Michael Egan that it dissuaded the state’s Motor Accidents Authority (MAA) from sending in an inspector to HIH last October.
Now leading financial commentator Robert Gottliebsen has weighed in with a claim that warnings about HIH’s performance were common up to 18 months before its collapse.
Writing in The Australian, Gottliebsen said insurance analysts at Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan and others “warned anyone around HIH who was listening – big share investors, management, directors, auditors and actuaries plus many insurance brokers and, most importantly, APRA – that HIH was under-providing for losses and endangering the company”.
“They all turned their back on these warnings.”
Tipping a future spate of bankruptcies among doctors, lawyers, accountants and builders, as well as other groups, Gottliebsen said many insurance brokers “preferred telling their clients about the great bulk deals they were negotiating rather than issuing warnings”.
But he acknowledged that about half the brokers’ PI cover was with HIH – a pretty good indication they weren’t aware of the insurer’s financial problems.