Personal injury insurance for Taiwanese military personnel was among a number of questionable policies issued by failed Australian insurer HIH Ltd, an Australian inquiry heard yesterday.
A royal commission -- the highest level of inquiry in Australia -- is hearing evidence into HIH's collapse in March last year.
HIH fell apart with estimated deficiencies of up to A$5.3 billion (US$3 billion).
The royal commission was told that HIH provided personal injury cover for Taiwanese military personnel during the 1990s in breach of the former high-flying insurance company's own underwriting guidelines and controls.
"This business should never have been written," HIH's former internal audit division general manager Greg Waters said, referring to the fact that the military in Taiwan operates in one of the most volatile flashpoints in the world, the Taiwan Strait.
Waters said the cover for Taiwan's army was entered without reinsurance.
"The nature of the risk, the types of claims that were coming through that just were appalling. That exemplified the nature of the risk and my understanding is that the business was written without reinsurance and there was an attempt to place reinsurance after the event," he told the inquiry.
The military has announced plans to scale back the total numbers of personnel to about 355,000 by the end of 2006 from about 400,000 last year.
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