Turks associate Scott Breihl has won the Australian Insurance Law Association’s (AILA) Gill Award with a presentation on fairness in the ombudsman complaints resolution scheme.

Mr Breihl wrote and presented on the topic “A fair go: what insurance ombudsman schemes around the world can learn from the Australian experiment with fairness”.

“This Australian fairness experiment has provided increased consumer protection and outcomes but has also resulted in a nebulous notion of fairness not represented in law, contract or industry codes taking precedence over procedural fairness,” the paper says.

Mr Breihl does not advocate legislative change, saying the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has committed to the findings of a Treasury review, which last year made 14 recommendations on fairness, including that AFCA not operate as a fairness advocate in ways that reduces its impartiality.

“AFCA adopting the Treasury review recommendations will help to balance the perceived ‘fairness’ of outcomes,” he says.

The paper says schemes need to ensure consistent decision making and have visible, independent, forward-looking review mechanisms accessible by insurers and consumer groups.

Mr Breihl won $10,000 and will attend the Association Internationale de Droit des Assurances (AIDA) World Congress and present to AIDA’s consumer protection and dispute resolution working party. The event will be hosted by AILA in Melbourne from August 30 to September 1 next year.

Second place in the Gill Award went to Timothy Chan from Norton Rose Fulbright, whose paper and presentation was titled “A question of degree: making the uninsurable insurable on the road to climate change mitigation and resilience”.

The award recognises the contribution of Michael Gill to AILA and AIDA. Mr Gill is a former partner and chairman of DLA Piper, where he remains a consultant, and was the co-founder of AILA.