Insurance disputes: Number of appeals against FIO orders drops to zero: Ombudsman

LAHORE: The number of appeals against Federal Insurance Ombudsman (FIO) orders on insurance disputes has dropped to zero.

This was revealed by Federal Insurance Ombudsman Dr Muhammad Khawar Jameel during an exclusive interview with Business Recorder.

He said his policy of “persuasion and not prosecution” in settling disputes has worked tremendously over the past three years due to the cooperation by the insurance companies by and large.

He is a retired bureaucrat and son of renowned literary figure Dr Jameel Jalbi.

Dr Khawar Jameel took charge of the office of FIO in 2019, followed by the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, which provided him the opportunity of studying the insurance sector of Pakistan besides the relevant laws in detail before putting his strategy in action to switch over the FIO system from prosecution to persuasion for dispute resolutions.

He issued new guidelines for all the regional offices of FIO to adopt the policy of amicable resolution of disputes, in line with the spirit of his office, instead of let the parties prosecute each other for a long litigation.

According to him, this change of approach worked and the volume of financial benefit to policyholders touched Rs2.54 billion in the calendar year 2022 from a mere Rs410 million back in 2019.

Dr Jameel said he convinced the insurance companies to share their profit with policyholders instead of paying heavy fees to their lawyers for filing appeals against the FIO orders.

“I argued with them on the basis of their balance sheets and persuaded them to change their policy towards policyholders,” he said, adding the contribution of the insurance industry has surged to one percent from earlier 0.8 percent in 2019. It was the lowest contribution of any insurance industry in the region at that time, he recalled.

He said he also persuaded the industry to standardise their terms and conditions, enhance the font size of the instructions on policy documents and ensure Urdu translation of 10 salient conditions of a policy. It helped the policyholders to understand the risk factor and take a substantive decision, which doubled the confidence of the public on the insurance industry.

According to him, he also launched aggressive awareness campaign with the help of the insurance industry to promote insurance culture in Pakistan.

He said the office President of Pakistan has also acknowledged the role of the FIO office in promoting persuasion than prosecution for amicable resolution of disputes.

“Justice Zahid, legal advisor of President of Pakistan, called me in 2020 expressing his worries over reduction in the number of appeals to the office of President. However, he expressed his deep satisfaction when got an answer that the office of FIO is following the principle of persuasion than prosecution for the resolution of disputes,” he added.

Dr Jameel has claimed to reduce the loss to a policyholder through tangible intervention and the situation has improved by 80 percent today, if not 100 percent.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023