PIDM: Forum will enhance policy owner protection schemes

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KUALA LUMPUR: The International Forum of Insurance Guarantee Schemes
(IFIGS), which was launched on Wednesday, will raise the benchmark in
developing policy owner protection schemes.
Perbadanan Insurans
Deposit Malaysia (PIDM), which is one of 15 founding members of the
IFIGS, said the forum would enable insurance guarantee schemes and
other stakeholder organisations to enhance their cooperation to develop
the schemes.
PIDM said IFIGS' mandate was to facilitate and
promote international cooperation between insurance guarantee schemes
and other stakeholders which develop policy owner protection schemes.
PIDM chief executive officer JP Sabourin
said on Thursday that PIDM was keen to share its collective experiences
and transfer of knowledge on setting up and managing effective
insurance guarantee schemes to protect policy owners if there was an
insurance company failure.
Essentially, an insurance guarantee
scheme is a body mandated to provide policy owners with protection
against loss of their insurance benefits when an insurer is unable to
fulfil its insurance contract commitments.
The protection can be
in the form of payment of compensation or by securing the continuity of
coverage of the insurance contracts.
To recap, PIDM was set up
in 2005 to administer the national Deposit Insurance System (DIS) and
the Takaful and Insurance Benefits Protection System (TIPS) in Malaysia.
PIDM
protects bank depositors and owners of takaful certificates and
insurance policies against the loss of their bank deposits or
takaful/insurance benefits should a member institution fail.
PIDM is also a member of the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI).
Sabourin
said PIDM was committed to building strong partnerships and
international collaboration and exchange with other deposit insurers
and insurance guarantee schemes.
"Our involvement is part of our
ongoing international initiatives to help promote Malaysia as a centre
of excellence for financial services.
"Through collaborations
with IADI and IFIGS, we can share knowledge about how PIDM operates our
financial consumer protection systems while at the same time enable us
to learn from other protection systems, especially those with
intervention and failure resolution experiences," he added.
He
added the launch of IFIGS would boost ties between insurance guarantee
schemes around the world and it would be a very valuable platform for
exchanging ideas and discussing common issues. Other IFIGS members
include insurance guarantee schemes from Australia, Canada, France,
Germany, Greece, South Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, Singapore,
Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the US.