Old Mutual Insure continues to drive customer satisfaction in a conduct of fairness

Antonia Oakes, Head of Customer Experience at Old Mutual Insure.

“A misperception has arisen that a low overturn rate is indication of an insurer’s service excellence. This is in fact not the case. A low overturn rate can have a number of meanings.” - Deanne Wood, Ombudsman for Short-term Insurance

The office of the Ombudsman for Short-term Insurance (OSTI) released its annual report last week, which revealed that Old Mutual Insure experienced a slight increase in its Overturn Rate during 2017. The report measured the insurer’s overturn rate in 2017 at 25.92% (slightly higher than previous year’s 25%). This means that a quarter (25.92%) of all Old Mutual Insure cases referred to the OSTI were ruled in favour of customers. Important to note that the statistics published include statistics for iWYZE and Mutual & Federal Risk Financing:

Improving customer experience, one complaint at a time

According to Old Mutual Insure’s Head of Customer Experience, Antonia Oakes, the insurer is focused on improving the customer experience throughout its insurance processes and on providing an efficient and fair resolution to complaints.

Oakes said: “For this reason we have considered additional stages within our processes like, a centralised claims area which ensures quality of rejections and an internal arbitrator to deal with complex disputes. The appointment of an internal arbitrator has already seen the number of referrals to the Ombudsman being reduced. These interventions are part of a broader initiative called the ‘Service Promise’, which we took to market last year.”

Oakes concluded: “As part of our Service Promise to our customers and brokers, we commit to deliver an easy and memorable experience by implementing alternate dispute resolution processes to make sure that customers have ample recourse for their complaints before they have to approach the Ombudsman. This has built customer confidence in our processes and we are already seeing this in the dramatically reduced Ombudsman referrals this year.”