IAG and Suncorp have directed their external law firms not to provide confidential claims data and fee arrangements to QBE as part of a tendering process.

QBE has asked law firms tendering for its legal work to provide information on the services they provide to other insurers.

Earlier this year QBE CEO Frank O’Halloran said the insurer was interested in “bolt-on acquisitions” overseas but he made it clear that QBE was not in discussions with such major competitors as IAG, Promina and Suncorp.

And Mr O’Halloran would be unlikely to try to access confidential information by such a back-door method – he has enough expertise available in-house to make accurate projections on where the competition in Australia is at.

The information required from law firms by QBE includes pricing arrangements with other clients, how much they have been paid in the past year by those clients, a profile of insurance matters by revenue and number of claims handled in the past year, and their success rate in dealing with those matters.

QBE spokesman Jennifer Arnold wouldn’t comment to Sunrise Exchange News on the issue, or identify who made the decision to demand information competitors would obviously not want to see fall into the group’s hands.

It is understood up to 300 firms were asked by QBE to tender for its work but only 10 of those are likely to be successful. IAG and Suncorp wrote to its law firms last week warning that such information was confidential.

“Any commercial arrangements with our service providers (whether legal firms or others) are confidential – both to protect the interests of our service providers as well as our own,” an IAG spokesman said.

Suncorp spokesman Jamin Smith says the QBE tender asked for “an incredible amount of information”. Suncorp has asked its legal panel to respect commercially sensitive information if any of them do respond to the tender.

“We expect all of our suppliers to respect our commercially sensitive information. It’s a straightforward matter.”