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Johannesburg - At least 9 000 complaints were filed against short-term insurers last year, the industry's ombudsman Dennis Jooste said on Wednesday.
This represented a rise of 1.7% from 2011, he said in a statement.
"Most of the complaints received... involved motor claims, householders' and house owners' claims - a pattern experienced for many years."
Jooste said motor claims made up nearly half of the claims, and the industry experienced a difficult year with reported losses of nearly R2bn.
"Although the floods in Mpumalanga and Limpopo and hailstorms in Gauteng affected the underwriting results of insurers, by year end they had not caused a major increase in the number of complaints received by our office."
Disputes were resolved quicker.
"[The turn-around time] was reduced to 183 days or by just over three months. During the second six months of 2012, it reduced to 158 days, while the statistics for the first three months of 2013 show an average turn-around time of 133 days."
Jooste said one of the reasons for the substantial improvement was because he held meetings with insurers during the year.
"We held 96 meetings in 2012, where insurers were requested to reduce their response times and pressure was also put on our own staff to ensure deadlines given to both insurers and complainants were met."
