Insurance premiums have been rising sharply. After copping a sixty percent price hike, one customer took on insurance giant Suncorp and had the massive increase overturned. There are calls for other customers to follow suit.
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00:00They took them to the financial ombudsman, AFCA, and AFCA can only consider these cases
00:09under very limited circumstances, including if the premium was incorrectly calculated,
00:15and they said that basically, compared to previous periods of insurance, the risk for
00:20their property hadn't changed a lot, and that was despite it being a very high risk of bushfire
00:26and hail, according to the insurer, and they were successful in convincing the ombudsman
00:32that nothing substantial had changed to justify this massive increase.
00:36They said that the insurer had failed to provide persuasive evidence to convince them that
00:43the price rise was justified.
00:46The insurer did point to this very high risk of bushfire and hail at the property and said
00:51the fire services levy for New South Wales had increased, but when the ombudsman pushed
00:57about that, the increase had only been 0.6 of a percent, and so the ombudsman found that
01:05the calculation of the premium was incorrect and that it should be, in fact, much lower.
01:11This never happens simply, and so they hope that it's going to be a precedent that the
01:16ombudsman follows for future cases and that there will be a significant onus placed on
01:23the insurer to justify these premium increases where people believe they're excessive and
01:28can't be justified, and these generalised answers about increased risk have to be actually
01:37backed up with substantial information this ombudsman decision seems to point to, and
01:43so consumer groups want more people who believe their premiums are excessive and can't be
01:49justified based on factual information to challenge the cases to the ombudsman if they've
01:55already gone to their insurer and aren't satisfied.