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Insurance service center
Office of Insurance Commission
Thailand

The Problem

One of the missions of the Office of Insurance Commission (OIC) is to protect the public’s beneficial rights on insurance. According to this mission, the policyholder protection and public service are considered to be OIC’s duty and responsibility. Prior to its transformation, The Office of Insurance Commission, initially the Department of Insurance (DOI) was a government body under the control of the Ministry of Commerce. When operated as a government body, the DOI was faced with several problems at that time such as political interference and limitation of financial resources. Therefore, with insufficient budget, DOI was unable to neither attract and retain highly skilled staffs nor improve infrastructure and tools for conduct effective services to the public. Those problems result an ineffective delivery of service to the consumer.

In the last decade, a growth of Insurance industry in Thailand is increasing continuously. The insurance product is also getting more sophisticated and complicated. Thai people have more awareness of the necessary of insurance. Those factors bring more consumer complaints and dispute between policy holder and insurance company. Though some complaint and dispute can be settled quickly but many complaints and disputes are more complicated and take many steps to be managed. Therefore the quality of service relating to consumer complaint and insurance dispute has to be improved to ensure that consumer is delivered a high quality and quick service.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The Office of Insurance Commission (OIC) was transformed from Department of Insurance into an autonomous regulatory authority on September 1, 2007 by the Insurance Commission Act B.E. 2550 (2007). OIC functions as an insurance supervisory agency in Thailand, regulating and supervising insurance business in Thailand, with its primary mandate being to safeguard policyholders from undue loss. After the transformation, OIC can now manage its own budget without a fixed yearly budget from the government. As a result, OIC can manage its middle term and long term plans to supervise, promote, and develop insurance businesses more efficiently and appropriately. In addition, OIC now has sufficient budget to attract and hire more highly skilled staffs, especially in specialized areas of insurance supervision, actuary, and law.

In 2009, OIC improved complain and insurance dispute settlement mechanism to be fair, quickly and can be received by consumer at one point. In that year, “One Stop Service” concept was adopted by OIC to deliver better quality and quicker service to the public. The establishment of Insurance Service Center (ISC) at OIC new office is a significant development. OIC is now able to provide higher quality services and convenience to the public. The consumer can be delivered all kind of service relating to insurance information enquiry, insurance complain and dispute within this service center. ISC is providing service directly to the public with better atmosphere and friendly environment to make the people feel more comfortable and relax.

Together with the operation of ISC, there are currently many e-services provided to the public on OIC website (www.oic.or.th). On-line services in the form of downloads, such as the complaint form, the financial/annual reports, the agents/brokers application form, on-line checking for insurance agents/brokers examination results and the application form for seminars/workshops provided by OIC. The insurance data and related information, such as the insurance intermediaries licensing procedures, the insurance products being sold in the market, the new insurance supervisory methods/frameworks, and the new laws/regulations, are also available on-line. OIC also encourages the public’s participation by facilitating an on-line OIC web board where people can send in complaints and suggestions for better improvement of the OIC services as well as the insurance businesses.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Insurance business is service providing business. It provides a financial protection to the policyholder when they suffer loss of life, health, property or whatever under a cover of insurance contract or policy. The policy holders have to be paid by insurer when losses or claims occur. Insurance business can be expanded and developed if the public has confidence and awareness on the importance of insurance. The public must receive fairness from the insurer.

With this principle, Mrs Chantra Purnariksha, the current Secretary-General of the Office of Insurance Commission (OIC) realizes that consumer benefit protection is very important. The development of public services including insurance complains management, claim dispute settlement and insurance information service became one of main policy of OIC. Therefore the Secretary- General and Policyholder Protection Department established the Insurance Service Center (ISC).

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
OIC is aware of the significance of insurance development and has set goals to foster the public to gain knowledge and become aware of the importance, necessity and benefits of the insurance system in order for the people to be fully insured and gain fair benefits from the insurance system. The OIC’s Insurance Development Master Plan has been developed. The Objective of the master plan is to contribute to the development of the Thai insurance industry. The master plan consists of 4 main measures. One of those measures is upgrade of the quality of service and protection of policyholders’ interests.

In order to achieve the objective relating to the upgrade of the quality of service and protection of policyholders’ interests, OIC improved a better service quality, the system for policyholders’ interest protection and reinstating the government’s role on policyholder protection. Therefore the Insurance Service Center (ISC) was established in 2009. OIC implemented this initiative by using more information system technology and effective human resource management.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
In order to serve higher quality service directly to the people, OIC’s Insurance Service Center (ISC) provides two kinds of service in one place.

1) Insurance Hotline 1186: Hotline service 1186 is providing insurance information service to people who have question about insurance. Hotline 1186 was developed to delivery all kinds of information, knowledge, consultation and suggestions to the public within one channel. This is to facilitate people who have a problem relate to insurance and may need insurance information immediately. Hotline 1186 operates every working day and special holiday. In additional, OIC also promotes Q&A web board on OIC website and hotline e-mail to be alternative channels for people who need more information. Web board and e-mail is also the channel for people to give feedback to OIC.

2) Insurance Dispute Express Way: In order to enhance the effectiveness of dispute settlement and quality of service that relate to dispute between consumer and insurance company, OIC has introduces Insurance dispute express way. People could receive consultation and suggestion to resolve their problem with insurance company at Insurance Service Center’s express way counter. The target of Insurance Dispute Express Way is set to close one insurance dispute within one hour.
In order to achieve the target, insurance dispute settlement system was developed by using information sharing system. OIC with the cooperation from insurance companies developed the connectivity of the information system to the company’s complaint unit in order to enhance the effectiveness and flexibility in communicating. Companies complain unit staff communicates directly with OIC’s staff via telephone and sharing electronics document and information via internet to find the best solution of insurance dispute for consumer.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The main obstacles that OIC encounters when operate Insurance Service Center (ISC) is the inefficiency of the communication between ISC and company’s complain unit due to company’s complain unit staff was changed very frequently. Moreover most of company’s complain unit staff has no authority to make a decision regarding the dispute between consumer and company. OIC overcomes this problem by require insurance companies to update their complaint unit’s staff at least every three months.

Another obstacle is some communication and IT system is not up to date. Because the technology is changing all the time then OIC must update its infrastructure and tools to catch up with a new technology.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The establishment of Insurance Service Center (ISC) has allocate its budget for infrastructure and information system tools. After ISC started its operation, the most important resource is human. ISC must have staffs that have knowledge of legal, insurance contract and policy. In order to provide high quality service and effective dispute settlement, staffs also must have a service mind and negotiation skill. Therefore the policyholder protection department has to well allocate their skillful and experienced staffs to operate at ISC.

OIC also employ blind people to work in ISC’s Insurance Hotline 1186. OIC strongly believe that blind people is able to work as well as other people. Until now OIC has found that blind employees can provide very effective insurance information service to the public via Insurance Hotline 1186.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Yes, the Insurance Service Center (ISC) will be sustainable and may be larger in the future due to the expansion of insurance business. The growth of insurance business brings more complain and dispute. Moreover people also have more knowledge about their right to protect their benefit from insurance. When insurance business is expanding, OIC has to continuously improve the quality of service. In the near future OIC has a plan to replicate ISC concept to its regional insurance offices that situated over Thailand.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Insurance Hotline 1186 and Insurance Dispute express way are initiatives that OIC has created for the public in order to provide information and solve their problems on insurance.

Currently, Insurance Dispute Express Way closed insurance disputes within 1 hour with more than 60% of the total number of disputes. The other 40% disputes that could not be closed within 1 hour are more complicated and need more time to negotiate with consumer and insurance company. Moreover, we could solve the problems on insurance for the public from 7,935 issues and we could solve 6,348 (92%) issues in 2009 and in 2010, the numbers of issues that we have solved were 8,960 (94%) issues from 9,532 problems.

For the impacts of our initiatives, we can provide insurance information service more efficiently via Insurance Hotline 1186 and OIC webboard that people can ask questions and complaint about insurance, with more than 40,000 posted issues posted on the webboard.

What we have learned were the most importance for delivering higher quality services to the public therefore is Policyholder Protection Department needs to keep developing their staffs’ knowledge and skill. In order to fulfill this objective, Policyholder Protection Department uses the Knowledge Management to enhance quality of their staff. The Department staffs who have more skill and experience give coaching to other staffs. Every month ISC staff will meeting to share their problem and experience. The department also always transforms a complicated cast of insurance problem to be knowledge and keep them to reuse and shar.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Office of Insurance Commission
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Mrs. Chantra Purnariksha
Title:   Secretary-General  
Telephone/ Fax:   662-5132256
Institution's / Project's Website:   662-5153950
E-mail:   oic_thailand@oic.or.th  
Address:   22/79 Ratchadaphisek Rd.
Postal Code:   10900
City:   Bangkok
State/Province:  
Country:   Thailand

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