Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) will appear before the Senate Standing Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce today to discuss consumer issues in the financial services sector, and will call for greater consumer protection and transparency from Canada’s insurers.

“The livelihoods of thousands of small business owners, professionals and their employees are being threatened by skyrocketing business liability insurance premiums, and drastic reductions in insurance coverage and availability for many small businesses,” said CFIB president Catherine Swift, in a release.

Swift said that one key step in achieving better insurance customer relations is for the industry to develop a Code of Conduct to protect the interests of small-and medium-sized business clients. Also, there is currently insufficient data on business insurance markets to permit SME consumers to be adequately informed of their options.

Swift said such a Code of Conduct should include: a commitment to putting the client’s interest first; the right to be informed; the right to advance notice of any changes to an insurance policy; and the right to redress.

“Under the current system, those principles are inconsistently applied and too often the small business policy holder gets blind-sided,” she said.

Swift pointed out that in the 1990s, the banking sector developed a voluntary code of conduct for doing business with small- and medium-sized enterprises.

“The insurance industry is embarking on a multi-million dollar PR campaign to convince Canadians that the upward pressure on rates is easing and that everything is fine. We are hearing the opposite from our members, both anecdotally and through the high number of member faxes we continue to receive in our office on a daily basis,” said Swift.

“We believe that if we are to avoid in the future the cyclical problems that have recently plagued the insurance industry and threatened small business, government has to shine more light on what is going on there,” she said.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2005/17/c5475.html