The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) received fewer general insurance disputes in the June quarter, with all cases down 8% on the corresponding period last year.

General insurance accounted for 28% of the 8263 disputes received, second only to credit complaints, at 47%.

FOS Dispute Manager Graham Warner says general insurance complaints may be down because the June quarter last year featured a large number about Melbourne’s 2011 Christmas Day hailstorm, particularly concerning lack of service during the holiday period.

There have also been fewer natural catastrophes and hardly any disputes from this year’s Queensland floods, he told insuranceNEWS.com.au. See other story

When the service receives a dispute it is first referred to the financial services provider. FOS then accepts it if the parties cannot resolve the matter. GI disputes accounted for 30% of accepted disputes.

Meanwhile, FOS’ code compliance and monitoring team has published its 2011/12 report on the General Insurance Code of Practice.

The team identified two significant code breaches affecting 10,021 customers, who received payment of $5.29 million. It held 126 investigations into alleged code breaches, with 49 rectified.

Code participants self-reported another 2724 breaches and reported 7722 instances in which they could not meet the code’s claims-handling standards due to the 2010/11 Queensland floods.

Participants employed 34,621 staff, plus 5856 corporate and 11,695 individual authorised representatives in the year.

They issued 34 million personal insurance policies and 4.8 million commercial policies, and received 3.3 million personal claims and 556,031 commercial claims. About 3% of claims were declined, comprising 91,451 personal claims and 5667 commercial claims.

Customers raised 27,240 personal insurance internal disputes and 1635 commercial disputes. They finalised 28,400 disputes, of which 70% were in favour of code participants.