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The Earthquake Commission (EQC) has revised its reporting of the number of open claims it is working to settle, following an upgrade of its claim management system.
EQC said it is now working on an additional 949 claims that were not included in its reporting. This brings the total number of claims to resolve as of May 10 to 3,617.
“We want to ensure that we are providing as much transparency as possible and that there is confidence in the figures we are reporting,” EQC chief executive officer Sid Miller said.
The additional claims are at various stages in its resolution process – 80% of these were actively managed this year.
“I can assure all of our customers that their claims will be settled,” Miller noted.
He also said the EQC’s upgrade of its claim management system will “enable a more efficient case management approach.” The move, which involved a review of data and allocation of claims to specialist settlement managers, led to the discovery of previously unreported claims.
“We are disappointed to find that we have under-reported our claim numbers,” Miller said. The fact that this error has occurred is frustrating and further demonstrates the need for us to continue improving our reporting processes.”
EQC said no remedial requests or claims were lost and that there has been no slowdown in the resolution of remedial requests because of this issue. So far this year, the commission has settled more than 2,000 claims.
Moreover, EQC said it has commissioned KPMG to complete an independent review on its data.
“The objective of this engagement is to assist in providing confidence to the chief executive, board and minister about the completeness and integrity of the reported information,” Miller added. “As part of this we are taking all possible steps to make sure we have the right resources and systems in place.
“If the position changes again, we will proactively update the publically available information at this time.”
