Emma RadmoreThe FCA has carried out a review of life insurers’ bereavement claim process. The review covered 15 insurers representing over 75% of the life protection market. It looked at customer journeys for 4 product categories. The FCA decided to focus on bereavement claims as an area where customers may have a greater chance of showing characteristics of vulnerability.
The FCA focused on Consumer Duty compliance.
It found that firms approach processing of bereavement claims and capture associated MI very differently, and most firms could not produce clear and comprehensive servicing standards and threshold, making it hard to draw firm conclusions. It found some wider issues such as most firms not being able to meet their own performance levels, meaning that claimants are likely to be seeing delays, and that most firms are having resourcing issues. It also noted that only a few firms were able to provide details of end-to-end journey times for claims, but generally term insurance claims took longer to process than the other areas in the survey of group life, over-50 plans and whole of life. The FCA wants to see improvement in firms being able to assess service journey times on a product level and to be able confidently to monitor whether they are providing poor or slow services.
The FCA is working with insurers on helping them to adopt simpler, more digital claims processes. It is pleased that many firms are now accepting and validating claims online.