Page 200 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 19 - CONSUMER INTERESTS - THE 1990’S A PERIOD OF MASSIVE CHANGE
processing.With increasing consumer awareness about their rights, and a willingness to pursue them, the Industry established the Scheme, financed its undertaking and agreed to be bound by external, independent decisions. It has done so for ten years and continues to do.
It is a salutory exercise to revisit the embryonic Scheme, record how to it came to be, why it had such willing industry support and how it has developed into a mature service that benefits consumers and responds quickly and efficiently to meet insurance industry needs.
It has struck me how “history” tells so many stories-about the people who were involved, their passionate beliefs in what was being introduced, the constructive critical push for improvements and their acceptance of contrary views honestly put forward.
Although introduced in 1991, there was much discussion about a dispute resolution facility many years before this.”
Indeed, much credit should go to my predecessor Grahme Bond, who was responding to increasing pressure coming from government and regulators alike. The dad’s army of retired insurance people who worked for ICA handling consumer complaints, were key to the early days of IEC and they continued long into the FOS era. They were instrumental in persuading the CEO’s of the member companies that they needed to act. In a closed door seminar we, ICA, provided every company with a case study of how they had treated (mistreated) one of their own customers using evidence from our dad’s army case files. In those days it was ICA itself which provided a consumer complaints service.
It was not all plain sailing. We had government support and the support of the ISC, FBCA, and TPC as they were then, but not the consumer movement. Some consumer representatives individually took the brave and principled step of becoming the consumer representatives in the new structure, in the face of strong opposition from their own constituency. Their courage has helped give consumers a much better outcome today. Not all insurers were supportive either with some segments preferring the status quo.
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