CGU has taken action following the Queensland floods to ensure that customers know they can ask for a site assessment, CEO Peter Harmer told the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry last week.

Mr Harmer was questioned about the company’s dealings with Sally Doyle, who made a claim on a property in the Brisbane suburb of West End, but whose claim was refused because CGU does not cover flood.

The commission had used Queensland’s Commissions of Inquiry Act to require Mr Harmer and CGU National Claims Manager James Merchant to provide statements in response to information received from Ms Doyle, and they both addressed the inquiry.

Mr Harmer told the commission that if a claim was rejected because the loss was caused by flood, the customer was clearly offered a site assessment. But CGU had learned from the Doyle case that “people in times of trauma don’t always absorb the information that’s being conveyed”.

“So we needed to be much more explicit, much slower and more careful in the communication of the customer’s options at that stage.”

He said CGU rewrote material used by its claims staff and did further training as a result.

Ms Doyle disputed the rejection of her claim, as she believed stormwater from drains had a significant impact on her property, rather than river floodwaters.

Mr Harmer and other CGU executives met Ms Doyle at her house in February, and some days later she arranged a protest outside CGU’s offices. Later in the month she and Mr Harmer spoke by phone when, she told the inquiry, he told her twice in the conversation that he had listened to taped conversations between her and CGU staff and that he knew she had misled the media.

Ms Doyle told the commission she had not been offered a site assessment, an assertion rejected by Mr Harmer when he gave evidence the following day.

He said he and Ms Doyle had spoken by phone because a newspaper article in February did not convey a true position about her claim. At that stage the claim had not been denied, as CGU had asked for more information from her tenant so it could get an eyewitness account and arrange a site assessment. Her claim was denied in April.

He also rejected Ms Doyle’s recollection of their conversation about tape recordings, saying he had never listened to any taped conversation but had told Ms Doyle that they could check recordings because of the disagreement about whether the claim had been rejected and whether further information was required.

When Ms Doyle requested the tapes, he found the conversations had not been recorded.

She told the inquiry of her frustration in personally dealing with CGU.

“I felt that there was this strange, bizarre double-speak going on where information that I gave that contradicted the position taken by CGU was somehow being turned around to support their position; so I felt like my dissenting view actually wasn’t being heard and it wasn't being considered.”

The commission of inquiry is holding a hearing in Bundaberg today, and will travel later this week to Maryborough and Gympie to hear from residents in the Wide Bay and Burnett regions.