Page 206 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 19 - CONSUMER INTERESTS - THE 1990’S A PERIOD OF MASSIVE CHANGE
industry particularly at the level of company compliance managers. They wanted a prescriptive code where you could tick the boxes. However what ICA and its board and the senior executives in the industry wanted was a principles- based code that would drive innovation, competition in service delivery and positive consumer outcomes.
Because we had a track record with delivering on IEC the government had accepted my undertaking that we would make a voluntary code work.
I well remember we drafted the first code and then it became a to and fro of negotiation with the government, with consumer group lobby in the background. The final crunch came when I came to Sydney on Christmas Eve and met with the Minister for Consumer Affairs Jeanette McHugh at her constituency office in Marrickville, where we actually changed some of the words of the code sitting across the table. Based on that the Minister gave her approval and the Code was launched. However I have to admit that our legal advisor, John Morgan, had some difficulty understanding the words that I and Alan had crafted. Nevertheless, that was it!
The Code and IEC were of course interlinked. IEC were able to look to the code for examples of what is good insurance practice. Also the Code established a Code Compliance Committee under the auspices of IEC, which included industry and consumer representation and an independent chair. Later on IEC appointed a Code Compliance Manager, Stan Spanner, who did a terrific job of working with every company in implementation and monitoring compliance.
The implementation of the Code was a huge undertaking for the industry which had to change policy wordings, claims and dispute handling systems, and train all their people in less than a year. The Australian Insurance Institute rose to the challenge to provide the training and resources.
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