The General Insurance Standards Council (GISC) has completed 310 compliance visits to intermediary members, of which less than ten per cent are to private medical insurance (PMI) intermediaries.
But some Association of Medical Insurance Intermediaries (AMII) members say they have had “intimidating” compliance visits from accountants Pricewaterhouse Coopers, which holds the GISC intermediary monitoring contract. Ray Stibbards, who heads up the monitoring team, said he will be looking at the style of reporting.
The main breaches of the GISC code were described to the AMII July meeting by Stibbards.
The most frequent breach relates to rule C3.1 under which a GISC member must explain the type of service they offer and their relationship with the customer.
The second most common is of rule G2 – Complaints handling, section 2, under which customers must be informed at the point of sale of the member’s arrangements for handling complaints and the existence of an approved dispute resolution facility. Third on the list is rule G3 – Competence and Training, section 10, which says that members must maintain records of staff training.
Stibbards said: “The GISC rules are to protect the consumer. But we are also there to help you.”