CLHIA-ACCAP

D: CUSTOMERS CAN EXPECT ONGOING INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR POLICIES AND ONGOING SERVICE International standards are that insurers should service policies through to the point at which all obligations under the policy have been satisfied. In Canada, insurers have a number of processes in place to provide ongoing service, including issuing annual statements for those policies with cash values and handling claims in a fair and effective manner. Life and health insurance policies are often long-term policies, sometimes in place for decades before a claim occurs. It is important that customers have access to service during the life of the policy. Administrative matters, such as address or beneficiary changes, are often dealt with directly by the insurer. Advisors play an important role in providing ongoing service, as well, by doing reviews of customers' circumstances from time to time to see if their insurance needs have changed. Sometimes, ongoing service will be provided by the selling advisor, but in other cases, the advisor has left the business or retired. And sometimes, customers will request a new advisor if they're not satisfied with their existing advisor. Where companies have exclusive sales forces, these issues are more readily addressed, i.e. the insurer can assign a new advisor to the customer. Where companies deal with independent sales forces, there can be more challenges. While there may be different approaches to ensuring that the best interests of the customer continue to be met, we believe that the key principles underlying ongoing service are: (1) that the customer is entitled to ongoing service and advice, and (2) that the customer has the right to appoint a preferred advisor Recommendation 10: We recommend that regulators work with the industry to deal with the issue of ongoing service for insurers with non-exclusive distribution channels, building from the principles set out above, with the objective of developing an industry guideline that will reflect these commitments. CONCLUSION This report's recommendations are designed to build on existing strengths in regulatory and industry customer-facing practices to support international standards in a way that reflects the culture and regulatory structure of life insurance distribution in Canada.

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