2015 Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) & Christmas Cocktail Party
The EGM will be held at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, 16 December 2015 at HKFI's conference room to consider and approve the new subscription fee scales (please refer to Circular Ref: Mv128/15 for details). This will be followed by our traditional Christmas Cocktail Party. We look forward to seeing you all there .
Competition Ordinance
The consultant appointed by the Task Force has already identified the case studies of accepted insurance activities from other markets which are relevant to the Hong Kong context and is examining the HKFI practices as a trade association. As the Ordinance will come into full force on 14 December 2015, the Task Force will organise another briefing at which the consultant will draw the attention of Members to some crucial areas. Details of the briefing shall be available in due course.
Meeting with the Secretary for Justice
Establishment of a Centralised Claims Database for the Prevention of Fraud
In some insurance markets, it is estimated that close to 10% of property / casualty insurance industry’s incurred losses and loss adjustment expenses is lost due to insurance fraud. The US data show that fraud steals US$80 billion a year across all lines of insurance. Such massive loss will push up the premium level and honest customers will suffer.
Experience from the overseas markets such as the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, etc, also shows that an industry wide claims database can help strengthen insurance industry's collaborative capabilities in detecting, deterring and preventing fraudulent claims to protect the interests of honest consumers.
In this connection, the setting up of a claims database has been chosen as a top priority item in our 5-year plan under HKFI’s Vision 2028. The results of the HKFI Member Survey conducted earlier this year also indicated an overwhelming support from Members. The Governing Committee has thus allocated a budget for the necessary consultancy study to ascertain the feasibility of the project and work out legal issues related to data privacy.
For the above work, we have set up a Provisional Board with Mr Allan Yu as Chairman. We aim at appointing the project consultant before the end of 2015 to start the ball rolling. And we shall keep you fully and timely informed of progress.
We had a lunch gathering with the Honourable Rimsky Yuen, the Secretary for Justice, last week and had a good exchange of ideas over a range of current legal issues of relevance to the insurance industry. We are most grateful to Mr Yuen for his insightful advice.
Visitors
This important project is primarily meant for the good of the insuring public at large, and we will proceed cautiously to ensure it is sustainable, legally sound and delivers the objects as intended.
W e received two senior officials from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Financial Work and Shijingshan Financial Services Office last week. In addition to briefing them on the objective and functions of our self-regulatory regime in Hong Kong, we also shared information and observations on the market developments of both cities.