Complaints drop as firms take policyholders more seriously

The Insurance Claims Complaints Board (ICCB) received fewer complaints last year than in 1996, reflecting a more serious attitude of insurers towards policyholder complaints, the board's chairman Henry Wong Wei-chow said yesterday.

Set up in 1990, the ICCB aims to provide independent adjudication of complaints between insurers and policyholders. Nearly all insurers in Hong Kong are ICCB members and are obliged to follow its decisions.

Mr Wong yesterday said that for the year to December, it had dealt with 128 complaints, down from 142 complaints in 1996.

Of the 128 cases, 106 were completed with settlements worth a total of $2.6 million, a 170 per cent increase over 1996.

The highest award in a single case came to $520,000.

'The decrease in the number of complaints may be due to the fact that insurers are more serious in dealing with claims of policyholders, in a bid to avoid complaints going to the ICCB,' Mr Wong said.

The representative of the General Insurance Council (GIC) on the ICCB, Peter Dunn, said he agreed that more policyholders were aware of the existence of the board.