IN MAY 2020, following an extensive national search, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) announced the appoint-ment of Andrew Hall as the peak body’s new executive director and chief executive. A former ministerial media advisor who previ-ously served as executive general manager of corporate affairs at CBA, Hall took over from Rob Whelan, whose reign at the ICA spanned more than a decade. IB recently caught up with Hall to find out how his time at the helm of the ICA has been so far.
“It’s been obviously quite busy and unusual because of COVID, as I started mid-pandemic,” he says. “The upside was there was an opportunity to meet a lot of insurer members quickly because we could use Zoom meetings and the like. On the policy front, it’s been dominated by issues around business interruption [BI] insurance and the court cases. But that’s been an oppor-tunity to really understand what’s happening in the sector and what’s happening within each individual company and get perspec-tives on the challenges around BI insurance in the context of the pandemic.”
To date, Hall has borne witness to the release of several major reports – including the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission report, the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman report and the bushfire royal commission report – which he says not only keeps the ICA incred-ibly busy on the advocacy front, but has also been a good opportunity to learn about and understand some of the ongoing issues in the industry.
Lifting the lid on his decision to take up the ICA’s top post, Hall says that when he was approached about the opportunity, “it was appealing to me because insurance is a highly regulated market. It’s got a lot of consumer impact. And I like that whole combination of complex regulatory environments, dealing with advocacy in those environments, and trying to ensure that consumer outcomes and business outcomes can be aligned. So it ticked a lot of boxes for that reason.”
Hall, who moved from CBA following a transformational period both for the organ-isation and in banking as a whole, adds: “It was all around understanding risk, the importance of culture of organisations, and how that can really impact positive and not-so-positive consumer outcomes. I think insurers, as well, have been through a similar process with the royal commission. And I think there’s still a lot of lessons that have to be fully learned and implemented, but everyone is committed to making progress in that space.”
Hall also brings to the role the experi-ence he gained during a decade of working in federal politics, where he learned the impor-tance of building up strong reputational capital and closely engaging with politicians – both the government and the opposition.“We need to listen to what they’re saying,” he says, “and we need to understand that their concerns will be driven by concerns from their community and that those community issues need to be addressed.”
One of the biggest issues on Hall’s plate at the moment – alongside the hard insurance market – is BI coverage. Based on the ICA’s estimates, more than 250,000 policies will likely be affected by the outcome of the first test case on the Quarantine Act, with claim values approaching $10bn.
“The first test case, there was always a mechanism for an appeal built into that, and so insurers have exercised that,” Hall says. “So we’re in the hands of the High Court around whether we will receive special leave to appeal. But we’ve been working very closely with regulators and stakeholders to develop a comprehensive set of cases and policy word-ings for the second test case.”
At time of writing, the High Court had agreed to hear oral arguments on the appli-cation for special leave to appeal the ruling of the New South Wales Court of Appeal. Arguments will be heard in May or June at the earliest.
Meanwhile, the ICA lodged a second test case with the Federal Court in February, which will examine the application of further issues beyond the Quarantine Act exclusion. The second test case will determine the meaning of policy wordings as they relate to the definition of a disease, the proximity of an outbreak to a business and the preven-tion of access to premises due to a govern-ment mandate.
According to Hall, the priority is to get certainty for insurers through the courts. “As soon as we get court determinations, the industry will move quickly on processing the claims that are eligible for payment,” he says.
In the area of personal lines, Hall commends the industry for doing a “very good job” in 2020 when Australia emerged from the disastrous bushfires and hailstorms. He high-lights the comprehensive claims management processes and services developed by general insurers in response to the catastrophes.
As to what lies ahead, Hall says he’s “looking forward to the vaccine opening up the country again, and maybe we can get back to some sort of normality on how we live life within Australia. I hope that also provides an economic stimulus to the country, and I’m looking forward to really delving further into some of the biggest challenges around insur-ance and trying to help the industry chart a course in which we can find solutions to these challenges.”
