Significantly fewer people complained about insurance last year than the year before. The insurance ombudsman, Wilhelm Schluckebier, reported a total of 15,907 complaints in his annual report for 2022. In the previous year there were 18,344. Of the new complaints in 2022, 11,898 were admissible – 15.7 percent fewer than in 2021.
But it didn’t go down everywhere. The number of complaints increased in the area of motor comprehensive insurance, as well as in other insurances, which include travel, electronics and animal health insurance.
life insurances
As in the previous year, a particularly large number of complainants wanted to reverse their contracts by revoking them. This usually presupposes that customers have been incorrectly informed about the right to object or that certain mandatory information is missing. Because then the normal objection period did not start, which expires a short time later, but instead a so-called eternal right of objection. The Federal Court of Justice set a limit to this practice a few months ago, when it classified a violation as all too insignificant.
Schluckebier had to answer the same question: What is significant and what is not? And under what circumstances has the right to object really expired? The insurers mostly argued that the policyholders had proven over the years that they wanted the contract. By letting him go. But Schluckebier admits that such things cannot really be judged with legal certainty. There have been “decisions that require interpretation” by the European Court of Justice, and the Higher Regional Courts have also judged inconsistently in some cases. However, suggestions could be made to settle the conflicts.
car insurance
There, according to Schluckebier, the no-claims classification system again caused numerous complaints. Many policyholders do not realize that they can be upgraded if they switch insurers at the end of the year. Because some discounts and special measures came directly from the previous insurer. And you can’t just take it with you that easily. It is also noticeable that insurers have different tables for no-claims categories.
In the following, we show how many admissible complaints the ombudsman received per category (alphabetically, previous year’s value in brackets):
- Total: 11,898 (14,106)
- General Liability: 497 (561)
- Disability insurance: 267 (349)
- Home insurance: 1,769 (2,124)
- Home insurance: 665 (693)
- Motor vehicle liability: 572 (942)
- Motor insurance: 1,297 (1,267)
- Life insurance: 2,643 (3,412)
- Mortgage: 10 (11)
- Legal protection insurance: 2,565 (3,184)
- Other: 1,234 (1,077)
- Accident insurance: 379 (486)
But many complaints also came to an end. In 2022, the arbitration board closed 12,247 cases. Including inadmissible complaints that were not followed up, it was even 16,277. The average duration of proceedings fell from 70.3 to 69.0 days.
You can read the full report download here.
2023-05-17 18:41:58
#Significantly #complaints #ombudsman
