Opinion
Injured motorists in Queensland will be worse off for RACQ's withdrawal
7th Mar 2024
When the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ) stopped offering CTP insurance cover from 1 October 2023, it reduced the pool of CTP insurers in the Queensland market from four to only three and resulted in thousands of Queenslanders finding themselves with a new ‘green slip’ insurer. Many of those who have been forced to move to a different insurer were loyal and long-standing RACQ members who preferred to have their CTP insurance with a club and brand they trust. And all the resulting turmoil from RACQ’s withdrawal has resulted in several of their former customers asking me what this means for them, and will it mean that they are any worse off?
The concern of motorists to have their CTP insurance with a reliable and well-regarded insurer is understandable – after all, if they cause an accident, there is every chance that they will have family and friends in their car. So, against that background, it’s probably also understandable that some motorists have been a little concerned to hear my view that injured motorists in Queensland will be worse off for losing RACQ from the scheme – and the reason for that is revealed in the data.
Background
When RACQ announced that it was leaving the scheme, group CEO David Carter pointed to an analysis by Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC) Actuary Taylor Fry, which showed that claims management performance was comparable across the four scheme insurers. Broadly speaking, that might be so, but some important data sets show that RACQ in fact performed better against the key metrics that are most important to injured motorists.
There are 7,000–8,000 CTP claims lodged in Queensland each year. There has in fact been a small reduction in claim numbers over the last five years (excluding the current financial year). The numbers look like this:
Financial Year |
Number of CTP claims lodged |
2019 |
8932 |
2020 |
7814 |
2021 |
7474 |
2022 |
7682 |
2023 |
7572 |
MAIC Quarterly CTP Scheme Insights
The reduction in numbers in 2021 most likely relates to covid, but the relatively low number in 2023 is surprising given the amount of population growth that Queensland has seen. A victim of their own success, RACQ’s market share had been growing each year before drawing a line in October 2023. The market share of each of the four insurers over the relevant years are shown in the following table:
|
2019 FY |
2020 FY |
2021 FY |
2022 FY |
2023 FY |
RACQ |
19.31% |
21.36% |
23.23% |
24.84% |
26.24% |
QBE |
7.88% |
7.72% |
7.43% |
7.28% |
7.32% |
AAI (Suncorp) |
44.96% |
43.86% |
43.31% |
43.13% |
42.8% |
Allianz |
27.85% |
27.06% |
26.03% |
24.75% |
23.64% |
‘Market share by insurer-motor accident injury register’, Queensland Government Open Data Portal
Scheme Design
The Queensland scheme has been designed with a view to providing affordable CTP insurance, to promote rehabilitation of claimants and, according to s3 of the Motor Accident Insurance Act 1994 (Qld), to ‘encourage the speedy resolution of personal injuries claims resulting from motor vehicle accidents’.
Any practitioner who acts for claimants in this space will know that what matters to them most, is getting their rehabilitation sorted quickly and having their claim settled promptly. The ‘pain-points’ of claimants historically are insurers who drag claims out, who don’t make sensible offers at the first settlement conference and who are slow to meet their obligations to provide rehabilitation.
And against these metrics, RACQ was arguably the best performer.
Litigation Rates
It’s very rare indeed for an injured motorist to want to have their day in court. I certainly haven’t met many who want to find out what a judge looks like as a result of bringing a CTP claim! So, in that context, litigation rates are telling.
A review of all reported judgments between 2019 and 2023 shows that in those five years there were 81 judgments involving CTP insurers (in three cases there were two insurers involved and one case involved an interstate insurer). Despite having a smaller market share than RACQ, and a significantly smaller market share than Suncorp, Allianz was the most litigious. 25 out of the 81 judgments involved Allianz. The results are as follows :[1]
Insurer |
Total claims with a judgment |
Allianz |
25 |
AAI (Suncorp) |
20 |
QBE |
15 |
RACQ |
15 |
The Nominal Defendant |
8 |
Interstate Insurer |
1 |
And if trends are your thing, the results show that RACQ was in fact becoming less litigious over the last five years. The following chart shows the litigation rates of the four insurers:
Data sourced from the Supreme Court Library Queensland
Resolution Rates
The Queensland scheme is designed to promote the early resolution of claims through requiring parties to participate in a compulsory conference before proceedings can even be commenced. Litigating is meant to be the exception rather than the rule. And the data shows that RACQ has consistently been the best performer in achieving resolution at or by the point of the compulsory conference. In fact, in every one of the last five years, RACQ were the best performer and in all but one, Allianz was the worst. The percentage of claims resolved at or by the compulsory conference is shown in the following table:
|
2019 FY |
2020 FY |
2021 FY |
2022 FY |
2023 FY |
RACQ |
84.4% |
87.3% |
86.4% |
84.1% |
83.2% |
QBE |
78.9% |
80.8% |
78.5% |
72.8% |
70.5% |
AAI (Suncorp) |
78.4% |
75.9% |
70.4% |
73.9% |
76.2% |
Allianz |
76.9% |
76.7% |
71.2% |
64.5% |
65.9% |
MAIC Annual CTP Scheme Insights: 2022-23
If the policies previously held with RACQ are now being spread among other insurers, it seems highly likely that resolution rates are going to decrease.
Timeframe to Resolution
One of the greatest frustrations of claimants in the CTP scheme is the time taken by insurers to resolve a claim. There are any number of factors that influence claim duration, but the data once again shows that Allianz underperformed against its peers. The following table shows the number of months (according to MAIC data) taken from notification of the claim to the point of resolution by each of the insurers over the five years from 2019 to 2023:
MAIC Annual CTP Scheme Insights: 2022-23
The difference between the performance of QBE and RACQ on the one hand, and Suncorp and Allianz on the other is striking. To a claimant, an extra four or five months wait to see their claim resolved is very considerable indeed. Injured motorists would be understandably concerned with the trend in the blowout of claim durations with the remaining three insurers – particularly Allianz which has seen its claims take 25% longer in 2023 than it did five years earlier.
Conclusion
The Queensland CTP scheme is stable, affordable and in much better shape than those in other states. Like any scheme, incremental improvements can, and should be found. But what is clear, is that the data suggests that injured motorists will be worse off for RACQ departing the scheme – and that all stakeholders, including insurers, lawyers and industry groups need to work together to ensure that the loss of RACQ from the scheme doesn’t see a deterioration in performance against the metrics that really count to injured motorists.
This is an edited version of an article first published by Travis Schultz & Partners
The ALA thanks Travis Schultz for this contribution.
Travis Schultz is deeply motivated to ensure justice is accessible for everyone. Travis founded Travis Schultz & Partners in 2018 with a vision to create a professional services firm driven by the values of fairness, respect and compassion. Travis has been a Queensland Law Society Accredited Specialist in Personal Injury Law since 1999 and is recognised as one of Queensland’s leading compensation lawyers.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA).
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[1] This involves not just judgments making awards but also where a court has been called on to settle rehabilitation or other disputes relating to claims.
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