The Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) has highlighted its concerns about moves by the government to allow independent dispute resolution bodies more power in a bid to speed up unresolved Canterbury earthquake-related disputes.
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Paul Goldsmith announced yesterday that public consultation had started on a proposal to raise the compensation cap from $200,000 to $350,000 for property insurance disputes.
This would mean the four existing schemes (the Banking Ombudsman, the Insurance & Savings Ombudsman, the Financial Dispute Resolution Scheme and Financial Services Complaints) would be able to consider cases where the insurer and customer were seeking to resolve a claim discrepancy of up to $350,000.
“Currently disputes over $200,000 must be referred to the High Court, which many people may not be able to afford,” Goldsmith said.
“Dispute resolution is an independent, less formal and cheaper alternative to the Court system.
“This proposed change would enable more effective and faster resolution of issues, and in particular should help move forward some of the unresolved disputes in Canterbury.”
Anyone with a dispute dating back to August 2010 would be able to take advantage of the change.
However, ICNZ CEO Tim Grafton said he had doubts on the proposal.
“The retrospective nature of the proposal is not one that accords with good law-making, so this will be an area where we will want to understand the implications well, as officials appear to have given this little thought in their discussion paper,” he told
Insurance Business.
“We’ll be consulting with our members and providing input as part of the consultation process.”
Insurance lawyer Andrew Hooker said he didn’t think broadening the scope of the ISO and
FSCL would solve the problem.
He said when more was at stake, people preferred to have their disputes resolved in court.
“The technical issues which are being decided in court are groundbreaking issues… Brand new legal issues have come out of the earthquakes,” he told
interest.co.nz.
He questioned whether the ISO had the technical expertise to deal with the more complex cases and suggested the bottleneck could shift to the dispute resolution schemes instead of the courts.
Submissions on the proposal close on 9 April, with any resulting increase in the compensation cap being made in mid-2015.
Goldsmith said the upcoming review of the Financial Advisers Act and Financial Service Providers Act would provide the opportunity to consider the role of the dispute resolution schemes and their jurisdiction more broadly.
