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Allianz Travel Insurance Class Action

Bannister Law is investigating a potential class action against Allianz Australia (‘Allianz’) following reports from the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry that more than two million travel policies had been sold to consumers that the Australian Financial Review report are “dud policies”. It is suggested that these policies were issued by Allianz as well as their partner airlines, credit card issuers and travel agencies.

It is alleged that Allianz provided incorrect, misleading and false statements on its website to many hundreds of thousands of people buying its travel insurance for the past six years. False descriptions such as “unlimited” and “go anywhere” were used despite coverage being capped at $1000 for certain overseas medical procedures. The News.Com.Au website also reports that “one of the Allianz’s website from 2012 provided that its comprehensive travel insurance covered ‘wherever you’re travelling, whatever your needs’, despite the policy excluding areas for which Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (‘DFAT’) had issued travel warnings.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that “by late 2015, an external law firm had raised concerns about its use of the word unlimited in some travel insurance, but Allianz decided not to tell the corporate watchdog, ASIC or to remove the web pages, until the middle of this year.” In June 2018, this issue was reported to ASIC. Mr Winter, Allianz’s general manager for retain distribution, agreed to the fact that it was more important for Allianz to protect the bottom line than to stop misleading their customers.

Ms Orr: I want to put it to you that the sequence of events that I’ve taken you to, demonstrate that it was more important at Allianz to protect the bottom line, than to stop misleading your customers. Do you accept that?

Mr Winter: In this instance, yes.”

The Royal Commission has also revealed that Allianz has admitted its failure to report 46 serious breaches to the regulator, ASIC following discovery of the internal documents which contained incorrect or potentially misleading statements about its sale of travel insurance via its website.

Ms Orr: … every day that that website was accessible to the public, Allianz was contravening Financial Services Laws?

Mr Winter: Yes.”

We are seeking to identify consumers who have purchased travel insurance through Allianz or one of its partner companies from 2012 to June 2018. If you are interested, please register your details for a potential class action against Allianz to recover compensation for any financial loss suffered.

Consumers should register their interest below.

Class actions are legal proceedings brought by one person on behalf of a group. Rather than each person pursuing a claim separately, a class action streamlines the process, enabling a dispute involving large numbers of people to be resolved through a single case.

Bannister Law fights for the legal rights of Australian consumers. Bannister Law is also running several of Australia’s most high profile and significant class actions on behalf of consumers, including: the Volkswagen emissions class action, Ford class action, Dick Smith shareholders class action. Bannister Law also ran and resolved the class action against the makers of Nurofen.