[File Photo]

The Consumer Council of Fiji wants the Reserve Bank to review and modernize the Insurance Act 1998 citing the need for stronger protections within the insurance sector.

While making submissions before the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs, Chief Executive Seema Shandil sighted the growing number of consumer complaints against major insurers.

Shandil says legislative changes are necessary to ensure fairness and transparency for consumers.

“The Insurance Act 1998, we feel it should be amended to strengthen consumer rights in the Insurance Act or simplify insurance policies for consumer clarity. It must be mandated or amended to mandate plain language policies with bolded and maybe with the larger font size exclusions, require pre-sale disclosure of all terms and conditions.”

Shandil says RBF should also bolster enforcement by conducting random policy audits.

“The RBF should also strengthen enforcement through random policy audits to catch fine print abusers and publicly name repeat offenders or violators. Annual insurance report should disclose not only claim rates but claim denial rates as well. I think that’s very important and also surrender values and complaint stats that they have received.”

Reserve Bank Governor Ariff Ali admits there have been delays in reviewing the act.

“So hopefully we’ll see that it goes to Parliament at least 2026. So that’s our thing. And why do we need to change the Insurance Act? We need to change it to give us more powers, because as you rightly said, there are certain areas that we do not have powers, but the other is to bring it in line with international best practices.”

Ali says that the review process initially started during the previous government’s tenure but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He is hopeful that the updated legislation will be presented by 2026.

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