With the sharp increase in premiums announced for next year, health insurance brokers are very active. Problem: some people happily lie to receive the commission paid by insurers. The RTS has experienced this.
Like many people in Switzerland, an RTS journalist was recently contacted illegally by a call center. The employee behind the hidden number promised him substantial savings on his health insurance premiums and insisted on scheduling a home appointment with a broker. To check if this intermediary would present the best insurance or if he would be talking nonsense, the meeting was accepted.
Result: practically everything the broker said was not correct, confirms the French-speaking Consumer Federation, to which the RTS played the audio recording made without the broker’s knowledge, with the aim of warning the public against certain erroneous speeches.
False statements
The broker claimed to be mandated by the canton of Valais in the context of price increases for basic insurance, which is completely false. No canton mandates brokers.
The intermediary then falsely claimed that it was able to grant a 5% discount on premiums and that the cheapest insurance was a Groupe Mutuel product. Concerning additional insurance, the broker, among other things, encouraged people to lie on the health questionnaire. He insisted not to mention the after-effects of an accident which were pretexted by the journalist, who had to insist a lot on keeping a copy of the documents brought by the broker.
>> Read also: Abusive telephone canvassing is increasing with the rise in health premiums
Licensed broker
Contacted after his visit, the broker did not wish to comment on his actions, which resulted in a breach of contract with the company that employed him. The company specifies that the broker, trained very recently, admitted not having followed the instructions. She had already had to part with black sheep in the past.
Criminal complaint planned
Groupe Mutuel will carry out checks and reserves the right to denounce the agreement which binds it to this company and to file a complaint against its ex-broker. The canton of Valais will also file a complaint if it discovers his identity.
But apart from these criminal proceedings with an uncertain outcome, brokers who act outside the framework have not risked anything since September 1: it was on this date that insurers denounced a previous, more restrictive industry agreement, as regrets Yannis Papadaniel, health manager at the French-speaking Consumer Federation. “Unfortunately, they risk nothing, because the supervisory commission which provided for sanctions against insurers and brokers no longer exists. It is therefore ‘open bar!'”
Outdated system
This observation led Mathias Reynard, the Valais State Councilor in charge of Health, to say that reform is urgent. “We have a system which is sick and which does not work; we hope that the federal Parliament which will be elected will tackle this problem and allow its votes to be dictated a little less by the lobbies”.
Not all brokers are dishonest, of course. Despite everything, cases of abuse could call into question the very existence of brokerage in Switzerland. Insurers are already imagining the end of this system to which all insurers use, given the millions of francs at stake. It is then a lucrative market which could disappear because of brokers and insurers who have not been able to self-regulate by preventing abuses which, according to our interlocutors, have increased in recent times.
>> Read also: Sites try to pass themselves off as the OFSP premium comparator
Romain Carrupt
2023-10-20 07:22:34
#Beware #abusive #methods #insurance #brokers
