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THE CENTRAL BANK says it is “concerned” by the findings of an inspection they carried out in to how insurance companies deal with customers and their claims for water and flood damage.
The Central Bank of Ireland today published its findings from a themed inspection into household property claims resulting from water damage. They said they considered such a specialised report appropriate given the increased frequency of floods in recent years.
Claims
The report identified a number of shortcomings by the insurance companies. They stated there was weak oversight and controls over outsourced claims handling or loss adjusters and in isolated incidences there was potentially unfair settlement.
The also found that there was poor transparency in policy documentation and a lack of consumer awareness of the terms and conditions of their policies.
The Central Bank said there was also a lack of transparency around the practice of insurers retaining a portion of the agreed settlement, which was typically 30 per cent, until reinstatement has been completed and final invoices have been submitted (known as retention) and the extent to which consumers are not claiming the portion retained.
They added they were also concerned about the appropriateness of building insurance sold to some apartment owners.
Lack of transparency
Director of Consumer Protection, Bernard Sheridan said:
We are concerned by the findings of this inspection which has identified a lack of controls when using third parties to handle claims, a lack of transparency around the claims retention policy and policy terms that consumers need to be aware of at time of purchase and when making a claim.We also considered that policy booklets contained a number of terms and conditions which may not be fair or transparent to consumers.
Today the Central Bank is issuing an industry letter to insurers, drawing attention to the inspection’s findings and emphasising their requirement to be in full compliance with the code of conduct when handling claims.
Following the review, they said they were following up directly with the insurers inspected to ensure issues are addressed and further investigations of specific issues is appropriate in some cases, they said.
Review and improve controls
Insurers are being instructed to review and improve controls over third party service providers, to review policy documentation to ensure terms identified are fair and transparent and that material information such as the practice of retention is included.
The Central Banks said that some insurers are already taking corrective action in respect of the transparency of their policy documentation, while they said the practice of retentions is an issue that the Central Bank intends to further engage with the industry on, to ensure the best interests of consumers are protected.
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Who makes this kinda stuff up? I really don’t understand the mentality of the type of people who would go out of their way to play on people’s fears with a view to stealing from them (information, bank details, whatever).
@lambda sensor: I agree, but if it is a text message it should have a source number so the telephone operators should be able to pass on the information to the gardai. I assume it is an offence to impersonate a government or state (or any) organisation.
Jail without access to the internet for the duration to these scam individuals. If coming from abroad then block the foriegn operators numbers from all texts and calls to Ireland
The telecom operators can be very quick to protect themselves but are lacking in protecting it’s customs. Bet they could stop all texts with the link in it and other scams but for some reason they seem slow to act. Yet social media platforms can stop the spread and remove stuff if needed.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: There are many SIM card providers out there now so it would be very difficult to track things back to the source. With GSM cards being so cheap and easy to use plus the availability of GSM application SIM cards it is a very simple thing to setup a PC controlled system which will spit out messages all day. Those messages are not even sent from a standard off the shelf phone.
@David Corrigan:
If it is a foreign network, block the whole network and tell them to figure it out…
@David Corrigan: I have no doubt that they are almost certainly run from a device and not single composed messages in most cases and might be hard to trace back – ISP logs could help. But even if the guys could not be stopped the mobile operators could stop messages based upon content unless they have now encrypted plain text messages. We can then go to the ISP to block access to that link. Or do what they did in the USA, do a DNS redirected.
When telecom sites were replicated and phishing sites created to mimic them these sites were blocked or unhosted within 30 minutes – so it is possible to block access and prevent too much harm being done.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: it can be configured in a way that you only see the name of the sender (the name they give themselves) like when you get a text message from your bank with a one time password to login. The sender in turn can be located abroad.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: the whole world is seeing cyber theft and scams it is not unique to telcos that you allege ( wrongly ) that are sitting back and not taking action – there is an enormous amount of money and effort and resources spent by operators to try shut down scams – unfortunately once the the internet has been opened to all the smartfones then these challenges get more and more difficult – it is not as straight forward as blocking a call ( I work in this field )
Surely the network operators can block this fake information from circulating .
@Eug J Cummins: Would be next to impossible to do this.
@David Corrigan: block mass commercial texts that use the term HSE that are not from an authorised sender
@Eug J Cummins: They can (and used to many years ago) but wont now.
It would actually be straightforward, but would block advertising companies. These are sent by international SMS relays, and it would take 5 seconds to turn on a block if no number or name present.
Ah any close contact of a positive case would know this is fake . 24 days not one call from HSE. Luckily I contacted my contacts myself . Everybody in same circumstances should do it . If you know you’ve been exposed , contact the people you were with and tell them to quarantine and call their GP. Same if you’re a positive case . Otherwise it’s “ waiting for Godot”.
Those f@#£ers should be shot with balls of there own s#%T
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