17 August 2022
- Freedom Insurance customers are entitled to over $102 million in remediation for mis-sold life insurance policies.
- Customers who have not yet received remediation, can still come forward and claim remediation.
- Freedom Insurance no longer sells insurance products, but you can still contact the insurer who issued your policy to check if you are eligible for remediation.
What do I need to do?
If you believe you were mis-sold a funeral, accidental death or life insurance policy by Freedom Insurance between October 2010 and October 2018, or if you tried to cancel your policy without success, ASIC encourages you to contact the insurer that issued your policy and ask if you are eligible for a refund of your premiums.
Freedom Insurance used harmful sales practices to sell insurance and then unfair practices to keep consumers in the policies when they attempted to cancel.
Freedom Insurance distributed products issued by a range of insurers, including AIA Australia Limited, NobleOak Life Ltd, Swiss Re Life & Health Australia Ltd and ClearView Life Assurance Limited. The products may have been branded as ‘Freedom Insurance’, ‘Freedom Protection Plan’ or ‘Reward Protection Plan’. The Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) or contract will state the name of the underlying insurer.
If you have a policy available:
|
If your policy was issued by... |
...then: |
|---|---|
|
AIA Australia Limited (policies beginning with 94) |
Call 1800 517 070 or email contactus@iasas.com.au |
|
NobleOak Life Ltd or Swiss Re Life & Health Australia Ltd (policies beginning with 41, 51 61, 71, 81 and 91) |
Call Genus Life Insurance Services on 1300 88 44 88 or email enquiry@genuslifeservices.com.au |
|
ClearView Life Assurance Limited (policies beginning with 810, 850, 310 and 830) |
Call 1800 945 159 or email remediation@clearview.com.au |
You can always contact the insurer if you have concerns about the way your policy was sold to you, or you attempted to cancel your policy without success, or to check your eligibility for remediation. This is true even if you have not received previous communications about remediation.
Asking about and accessing remediation is free for customers. You can access remediation due to you by contacting the insurer directly. You do not need to engage an intermediary or agent that charges fees to access remediation programs.
After receiving a response from your insurer, if you still have concerns either about a policy sold to you by Freedom Insurance or how your remediation has been handled, you can take your complaint to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA).
Why is there remediation?
The insurers listed above established remediation programs to identify, contact and remediate customers who may have been harmed by the past conduct of Freedom Insurance. This past conduct included:
- not properly disclosing future costs or the key features, exclusions or limitations of life insurance policies at the time of sale
- engaging in inappropriate telephone sales tactics such as pressure selling
- inappropriately downgrading customers to more limited cover to close a sale or to retain a customer in the policy
- selling products with limited value to the customer, and
- not cancelling life insurance policies promptly when requested by the customer.
Useful links
- Freedom Insurance website
- ClearView Remediation Program website
- ASIC’s recent media release (22-223MR) about Freedom Insurance remediation
- Make a complaint to AFCA
ASIC is Australia’s corporate, markets and financial services regulator.