The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday said it would cut red tape for typhoon-hit policyholders to accelerate their insurance claims — a move agreed upon by the Life Insurance Association (壽險公會) and binding for its members.
Once prosecutors issue death certificates for casualties of Typhoon Morakot, domestic insurers should make payments on death benefits to their beneficiaries within 15 days, Joanne Tzeng (曾玉瓊), deputy director-general of the commission’s Insurance Bureau, told a media briefing yesterday.
Beneficiaries of policyholders who are confirmed missing by local police, township leaders or other authorities, will be allowed to collect the death benefits immediately, Tzeng said.
Normally, beneficiaries can apply for a missing family member’s death benefits only after the policyholder has been gone for more than one year.
For policyholders who have problems proving their identity or providing personal documents that were lost in floods and landslides, insurers should look for alternative ways to verify their claims and should under no circumstances hold up the process by using missing documents as an excuse, the commission said.
The commission also said three to six-month rollovers would be granted on mortgages and other loans.
The commission’s statistics showed that, as of Monday, insurers had paid NT$1.29 billion (US$391 million) to policyholders excluding life insurance claims.
Meanwhile, Lin Tung-liang (林棟樑), deputy director of the commission’s banking bureau, yesterday said the local banking sector may suffer more than NT$3 billion in mortgage losses because of Morakot.
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