Insurance reforms are ‘running out of steam’

PLANNED reforms of the insurance market are “running out of steam”, it was alleged after the move to introduce a new register of claims was abandoned.

The charge comes following the Department of Finance producing a report that recommends the scrapping of plans for a claims register. This is despite it being proposed by its own working group on insurance reform.

Insurers have been against the setting up of what is called a claim-by-claim register, which they said would be expensive and deter new entrants to the market.

Now the department has concluded that the setting up of an “insurance claim-byclaim register” should “not be pursued”. It said there was no clear need or purpose for such a register. It cited data protection issues and said setting it up would be difficult to justify from a financial and resource point of view.

The Alliance for Insurance Reform said it was “dismayed” at the back-down on the setting up of the register.

The Government’s working group on insurance reform recommended in January 2017 the creation of a claim-byclaim register to improve the quality of data to all those with a stake in the insurance sector.

It was argued that the register would provide annual statistics on claims costs and trends and could be used to combat fraud and inform the book of quantum, which is the guide to compensation awards for different injuries.

The idea was that it would have been shared among State bodies only, such as the Garda.

Peter Boland, of the Alliance for Insurance Reform, said his organisation was dismayed at the abandonment.

“This was a key piece of reform which would have added serious insight into trends in insurance claims and allowed the State to actively combat insurance fraud, an issue again highlighted by recent reports of systematic insurance fraud,” he said.

“The data it would have produced is not and will not be available anywhere else.

“The abandonment of this initiative is part of a worrying broader trend in the Government’s flagship insurance reform initiative, the Cost of Insurance Working Group. It seems to be running out of steam, with key actions either delayed or in this case, abandoned.”

A spokesperson for Junior Finance Minister Michael D’Arcy’s department said the recommendation of the working group was only to consider the feasibility of establishing a claim-by-claim register, saying D’Arcy “disagrees that there is a trend that the Government is abandoning key actions recommended by the Cost of Insurance Working Group”.

The quarterly update of the working group shows that 58 of the 71 deadlines on actions to date have been completed, the spokesperson added.

‘The abandonment of this initiative is part of a worrying broader trend’