IT WAS ALL A MISTAKE, SAYS LEWIS GROUP CHIEF

The Lewis Group is refunding R67.1-million to affected credit insurance policyholders, following “an extensive internal investigation by Lewis, which was triggered by the NCR bringing to the company's attention three instances of loss-ofemployment insurance mistakenly sold to customers”, says chief executive Johan Enslin.

As a result of “human error at our stores, loss-of-employment insurance products were sold to pensioners and self-employed customers, contrary to our company policy”, Enslin says.

“Although our IT systems included coded controls, which excluded loss of-employment cover from being selected as an option for certain categories of customers, our investigation revealed that mistakes occurred during the process of entering clients’ details into the system,” he says.

“These cases of erroneous selling of insurance go back as far as 2007.

“Management will not be taking disciplinary action as we believe this was a result of human error and have rather chosen to focus on corrective action to prevent this happening in future. These steps include improving IT systems, implementing further controls and oversight by management at store, staff training and monitoring at branches.”

He also says the company has taken several preventative measures to ensure “this type of human error does not happen again”.

“The number of customers [who will be refunded] is not disclosed, but the refund relates to less than one percent of all insurance premiums earned by Lewis Group over this eightyear period since 2007,” Enslin says.

“Approximately 30 percent of the affected customers are existing Lewis customers, and the refunds have already been credited to their accounts. Lewis is currently contacting the affected people who have settled their accounts, to arrange for the refunds.”