CONSUMER PAYOUTS
Clients receive R100m in payouts in ombud’s insurance rulings
Payouts are the same from a year earlier, says the ombudsman in her first annual results
Consumers received R100m in payouts thanks to rulings by the ombudsman for short-term insurance in 2016, almost exactly the same as in the previous year, ombudsman Deanne Wood said. Wood, a senior counsel, was reporting her first annual results as the ombudsman, having taken the job on March 1 2016. Wood said that because of operational changes introduced in 2016, as well as "an increased focus on quality outcomes", 1,313 fewer complaints were closed in 2016 than in the previous year, when 8,631 were closed. She said that the average turnaround time for complaints "remained within commendable levels at 91 days", but the number of cases that took a long time to resolve was up sharply. In 2016, 16% of cases took more than 150 days to resolve compared with 6% in 2015. But at least more than a third of complaints were resolved in far less than 60 days.
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