MANILA, Philippines —Insurance policyholders and potential buyers may have more reason to trust protection plans as the Insurance Commission resolved all 5,417 complaints filed with the industry regulator in 2023, according to the IC.
These disputes have been resolved either through amicable settlement between the complainants and the insurance firms, or through endorsement of the complaints for formal adjudication, the IC said in a statement on Monday.
Under the law, IC has jurisdiction over insurance disputes involving amounts not exceeding P5 million.
”We believe that if the insuring public becomes aware that valid insurance claims are paid out promptly, and disputed claims are resolved expeditiously… we will be able to build more trust among the people to take up insurance,” IC Commissioner Reynaldo Regalado said.
Data showed that the 5,417 disputes that IC received last year was 7.9 percent higher than the 5,025 cases the regulator handled in the previous year.
In 2023, there were 665 complaints filed against life insurance firms, down by 14.2 percent, while the volume of disputes involving non-life insurance providers fell by 11.7 percent to 838.
Also, the number of complaints against pre-need companies declined by 46.5 percent to 85.
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Meanwhile, the IC received 64 complaints against mutual benefit associations last year, more than double compared to 2022.
The regulator also tackled 313 disputes involving health maintenance organizations or HMOs, up by 33.8 percent.
8888 hotline
The remaining 3,452 cases involving insurance claims were received via the government’s 8888 hotline for citizens’ complaints.
At the same time, IC reported a 30.8-percent annual increase in the number of disputed insurance claims that had been endorsed for adjudication in 2023
The regulator also said that a total of 51 formal adjudication cases had been resolved last year, compared to only 39 cases in 2022.
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“A credible insurance industry encourages more people to avail themselves of financial protection,” the IC statement quoted Finance Secretary Ralph Recto as saying.
That is important to strengthening our people’s financial resilience in the face of so many uncertainties,” Recto said.