Annual report

The Insurance Ombudsman provides the annual report in German and French.

You can also download it in German or French.

OMBUDSMAN OF PRIVATE INSURANCE AND OF SUVA

Summary of the Annual Report 2009

4210 persons sought advice or help of the Ombudsman's Offices in 2009. 405 cases could not be dealt with for lack of competency; they mainly concerned social health insurance.

In addition to 2195 men and 1651 women, 364 firms, authorities and organizations applied for the Ombudsman services in 2009. By region, 3361 cases came to the Zurich Office, 523 to the Lausanne Office and 326 to the Lugano Office. The regional distribution of the cases differed markedly from the largely proportional population distribution among the linguistic regions in the previous years.

The imbalance between German-speaking and French- and Italian-speaking areas was striking in the classes of the mandatory accident insurance and the occupational pensions. While 797 such cases were filed in the German-speaking area, there were only 49 in the French-speaking area and 38 in the Italian-speaking area. The reasons for this imbalance are not known.

In 2009, 3805 cases could be resolved directly with the customers. 389 (10%) of cases required intervention with the insurance companies. 70% of these have been successful.

Although the number of cases we dealt with declined by 108, the number of the required interventions increased from 362 in 2008 to 389 in 2009.

More than one third of those cases required several interventions. These were necessary where the responses on the insurers were incomplete, unconvincing or plainly unsatisfactory. Most frequently, multiple interventions were needed in the class of personal insurance. 38% of complaints about the daily allowance in health and accident insurance, and 36% of complaints over life insurance required the Ombudsman's repeated intercessions with the insurance companies. In most cases, these interventions have been successful. The majority of multiple interventions dealt with highly complex matters of fact and of law, the resolution of which required intensive discussions between all concerned.