Page 201 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 19 - CONSUMER INTERESTS - THE 1990’S A PERIOD OF MASSIVE CHANGE
During this period, I was again fortunate to have good advice from people both within the industry and in Government. One of the advocates who was extremely generous with his time was the Hon. Peter Costello, Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia, who helped me in developing the necessary contacts to gain access Senior Government Ministers, responsible for the financial services industry.
The support from Government was crucial and the roles of Senator Tate, who launched the Scheme on 22nd May 1991, and Lionel Bowen who became the inaugural Chair of the overseeing body of IEC and LICS (the Life Insurance Complaints Scheme) known as the IICC – The Insurance Industry Complaints Council-have been well covered in Joe Isaac’s book.
The Claims Review Panel faced major challenges in its inaugural days.
Whilst we had government and industry support, the CRP did not have consumer support. The model, particularly the panel model, had not been tried before as any comparable schemes in Australia followed the ombudsman model. Whilst the scheme had achieved a great sense of industry ownership it faced significant challenge about not being independent, particularly of ICA.
Enormous credit for the early success and the development of the reputation, the procedures and policies of the scheme must go to Judith Cohen. The Hon. Judith Cohen AO was a former deputy president of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and was appointed the chair of the panel for the initial two years working with Harold Levick the former CEO of GRE insurance Ltd as the industry representative and Brendan Pentony, senior lecturer in law at Canberra University who was appointed a consumer affairs representative. Incidentally, whilst Brendan had been active in the consumer movement for many years and at one time was chairman of the Australian Federation of Consumer Organisations he incurred the wrath of the leaders of the consumer movement for accepting the nomination to the scheme.
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