Insurer accused of culture abuse

SALES staff at a life insurance company shunted products onto people that didn’t want them, benefiting from a cultural anomaly among indigenous Australians, the royal commission has heard.

Nathan Boyle, an analyst with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s Indigenous Outreach Program, told the commission Aboriginal consumers were often tripped up as financial customers due to a phenomenon known as “gratuitous concurrence” where there is a tendency among some Aboriginal people to agree to a proposition that is put to them, whether or not they actually agree.

Mr Boyle said Aboriginal people often replied “yes” to a question they did not understand, to avoid appearing “silly”.

Mr Boyle said an investigation into life insurer ClearView Wealth found recordings of telephone sales staff walking indigenous customers through the process of buying insurance policies where it seemed they did not want to buy the products.

“What we heard was people being walked through the process of buying a life insurance policy,” Mr Boyle said.

“They were saying, ‘Mmm, mmm’, or ‘Yes’.”

But he said Aboriginal people on those calls could be heard saying: “I don’t want to pay anything.”

The call staff responded that the customers did not have to pay anything immediately, but they requested bank details so the customers could be charged later. “People will provide enough information to sign up to a contract even when they don’t want to,” Mr Boyle said.

As part of a wider investigation by ASIC last year, ClearView was found to have sold more than 16,000 policies unfairly over three years through call centres.