The Polish Insurance Association (PIA) published a report based on the quantity of complaints against insurance firms lodged by consumers. In the time between 14th October to 31st December Polish insurance companies received 46,700 complaints.
This trend is a result of the new act – the Act of considering complaints by financial institutions, which became effective on 11 October 2015. The act provides that banks and insurance companies have to consider a complaint within 30 days. In specific situations this term can be lengthened to 60 days. If companies do not fulfil this obligation , a complaint will be considered to have been decided to the consumer’s favour. Also, companies have to pass on statistics about complaints lodged to the Financial Ombudsman.
The first report has been published by the PIA. They prepared the document on the basis of statistics received by the organization’s members, which represent 81 % of the Polish insurance market. According to PIA, within 2.5 months of the new act being in force, Polish consumers have made 46,672 complaints: 10,500 of them were accepted, 32,800 complaints were declined, and the others were being considered at the time of gathering the date. Also 5,500 complaints ended up in court and consumers claimed more than PLN 271 mln.
Specialists think that the increase was caused by changes which are compulsory under the new act. Firstly, according to this act, a complaint can be in written form, e-mail, or via telephone. Before 11 October 2015 a complaint was valid only in written form. Additionally, Andrzej Kiciński – the consumer issues specialist in PIA, stated that currently insurance companies treat all mediums of communications as official complaints and consider them within 30 days. Therefore, realistically, much of this correspondence in simply contact with insurance companies and not really complaints.
