Supporting customers experiencing vulnerability

Introduction

This Policy outlines Zurich’s approach to managing vulnerable customers affected by Family Violence.

Zurich seeks to minimise impact to customers affected by Family Violence by providing support and practical assistance.

Zurich considers ‘family violence’ as: “violent, threatening or other behaviour by a person that coerces or controls a member of the person’s family or causes the family member to be fearful”. This is consistent with the definition provided in the Family Law Act 1975.

Family violence is not limited to physical instances of violence and may also include emotional, psychological, financial/economic, sexual abuse and threats of abuse. Family violence can also include damage to property and animals. Customers affected by family violence fall within a broader class of ‘vulnerable customers’.

Zurich’s priorities when managing customers affected by Family Violence

Zurich’s priorities are:

• The fair and sensitive treatment of customers affected by family violence, ensuring they are treated with dignity and respect.
• Safety of the customer and their family.
• The provision of support and training to our staff who are dealing with, or may deal with, sensitive cases, including customers affected by family violence.

Management of situations where family violence is identified or suspected

Zurich will:

• Take additional care when dealing with customers affected by family violence and provide additional support and assistance in connection with the provision of insurance, advice and investment services, where reasonable.
• Not require evidence to trigger the requirements of the family violence policy. Someone self-identifying as being affected by family violence will be treated in accordance with the policy without further evidence being required.
• Treat all information about a customer affected by family violence as sensitive and will take measures to ensure the information is kept confidential.
• Engage with the customer to discuss and agree safe ways to communicate and record these communication methods on the customer’s file.
• Engage with the customer to determine if communication should involve the customer’s financial counsellor, lawyer, community services or social worker, legal aid officer or family violence specialist.
• Where reasonable, minimise the information that a customer is required to provide and the number of times a customer is required to disclose the same information, noting that they may not have access to their personal information, records and documents.
• Where possible, provide customers with consistency in speaking to one staff member, or providing a single pathway of escalation.
• Encourage customers experiencing family violence to notify Zurich of that fact via the Zurich website and relevant correspondence.
• Ask a customer who self-identifies as being affected by family violence what their financial situation is, to determine whether they are also experiencing financial hardship.
• Refer customers to specialist, external family violence and financial hardship services, as appropriate.
• Provide vulnerable customer training to all staff, including family violence training.
• Appoint an appropriately trained staff member to support a vulnerable customer, as required.
• Provide support to Zurich staff affected by family violence or who are affected by dealing with vulnerable customers through an employee assistance line, line management or human resources discussions, training and the provision of resource documents.
• Provide a copy of the public Family Violence Policy to a customer upon request.

If a customer is dissatisfied with Zurich’s management of their vulnerability, they can lodge a complaint at zurich.com.au/contact/complaints. Zurich will provide information about the complaint management process on their website
 

Our commitment to you

• Help you to apply for Financial Hardship support.
• Provide contact details for the National Debt Helpline: 1800 007 007 for those that need it.
• Keep you, or your nominated representative, up to date with your applications progress and connect with you via your preferred method (where possible).
• Consider all reasonable evidence supporting your application.
• Let you know additional information is needed (note: you will need to supply within 21 days.)
• Put recovery action on hold if applicable while we assess your application.
• Let you know the outcome of the Financial Hardship support within 21 calendar days of receiving all requested information.
• Share our Complaints process in case you are not satisfied with the outcome of your application.
• If you tell us that you intend to declare bankruptcy, then we will work with you to agree on the amount owed.
• If we agree to release, discharge or waive a debt or obligation we will confirm this with you in writing and, upon your request, we can also notify other financial institutions with an interest in your insurance policy of the release, discharge or waiver.

Life is unpredictable – change can come our way whether we’re prepared for it or not.

If you’re a Zurich customer, going through financial hardship and having difficulty meeting your financial obligations to us, we can work with you to come up with a solution that’s tailored to your needs. This can include issuing an advanced claims payment, within 5 business days of demonstrating your hardship, or offering flexibility in relation to amounts that are owed to us.

Our contact details:

If we need to ask you for money because of damage or loss that you caused, this Complaints Resolution process will apply to you too.

When we first communicate with you about any money owed, we will provide you with information:

• to show that the amount we are seeking from you is fair and reasonable.
• about our Financial Hardship process; and
• about how to contact us in case you have any questions.

These Financial Hardship provisions also apply to any Collection Agent or Solicitor collecting money for us.

Complaints resolution process

If you have a complaint about our products, services, staff or our handling of a complaint, please contact us by:

We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 24 hours or as soon as practicable. In a number of circumstances and where you don't require a written response, we will attempt to resolve your complaint within 5 business days.

Where we are unable to resolve your complaint in that time, and we have all the information we need to respond to your complaint we will write to you within 15 days.

If your complaint is still not resolved because additional information or investigation are required, we will notify you within those 15 business days and seek to agree an alternative timeframe with you. We will keep you informed of the progress of your complaint at least every 10 business days unless otherwise agreed.

If you are not satisfied with our response or we cannot agree an alternative timeframe, you may have the matter reviewed through our internal complaint review process, which is free of charge. If you request your complaint to be reviewed and we have all the information required, we will respond in writing within 15 business days. If we cannot meet this timeframe because additional information or investigation is required, we will notify you within those 15 business days and seek to agree an alternative timeframe with you. We will keep you informed of the progress of your complaint at least every 10 business days and in any event, we will provide our final response to you no later than 30 calendar days after receiving the complaint.

We subscribe to the independent external dispute resolution scheme administered by the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), which is available to customers and third parties who fall within the AFCA Complaint Resolution Scheme Rules.

If our decision on your Complaint does not resolve your Complaint to your satisfaction, or if we do not resolve your Complaint within 30 calendar days of the date, we first received your Complaint, you may refer your Complaint to AFCA.

If you wish to do so, you should refer your matter to AFCA as early as possible, as time limits can apply.

If AFCA advises you that AFCA cannot assist you, you can seek independent legal advice or access any other external dispute resolution options that may be available to you, for example by contacting the Department of Fair Trading, your Solicitor or Local Court as you may be able to have the matter resolved by:

• Small Claims Court or Tribunals
• Formal legal proceedings out of the District or Supreme Counts
• Mediation Contact details for AFCA are: Online: www.afca.org.au Email: info@afca.org.au Mail: Australian Financial Complaints.

Zurich is committed to supporting & providing practical assistance to customers who are facing financial hardship.

Financial Hardship refers to a circumstance where the individual has or may have difficulty meeting their financial obligations to us.

Financial Hardship may be due to (but not limited to) a death of a family member, injury, illness, involuntary unemployment, change in personal circumstances or a natural disaster.

How we can support you

If you are facing financial hardship, we will work with you to identify how best to support your individual circumstances, which could include altering cover to make premiums more affordable, changing payment frequency, review of premium loadings, increase waiting period, temporary suspension of premium payments, or switching off indexation.

There may be circumstances (such as Natural disaster) which mean customers may not be able to provide required documentation or may be impacted financially by the events. Zurich will apply a practical approach to assist customers during this time and will take actions that are appropriate to the situations including, such as prioritising financial hardship requests, being flexible with requests for information & where appropriate, referring customers to specialist external financial hardship services.

Our priority is to provide options which suit your unique needs, while being fair, sensitive & timely in our approach.

Any person authorised to act on behalf of a customer (including a lawyer, family member, carer, interpreter or friend) may make a Financial Hardship request.  

Support at claim time

If a customer is suffering Financial Hardship during the claims process because of the condition that has caused the claim, we will prioritise the assessment of the claim and where possible consider making an advance claims payment. We will confirm the outcome in writing within 5 business days of the hardship being demonstrated.

We may ask for further information

There may be times where we ask for further information as evidence, such as financial information, so that we can understand how best to support you. We will get in touch if this is the case.

Contact Us

If you are experiencing financial hardship or would like further information, please contact us via one of the below options.

By phone
Life & Insurance & Investments: 131 551 International callers: +61 2 9995 3777

8:30am - 7pm AEST Monday - Thursday
8:30am - 5:30pm AEST Friday

Zurich Assure: 1800 161 168

By email client.service@zurich.com.au

If you are not satisfied with our suggested outcome, you can lodge a complaint through our website zurich.com.au/contact/complaints or by contacting us on the above number.

Support at claim time

If you require professional financial help, please refer to our website zurich.com.au/contact/supporting-customers-experiencing-vulnerability for Government & Community organisations which offer free counselling services & resources.