Scores of funeral undertakers affiliated with the National Funeral Association of South Africa will on Monday morning embark on a protest march to the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) head office in Pretoria.
Organisers say this may result in total tools down at mortuaries across Gauteng, North West and Mpumalanga as members are expected to join the march.
They’re demanding among others, that the FSCA speed up insurance claims for scheduled burials and are also urging the institution to do away with the system that they claim favours financial brokers instead of the consumers.
Funeral directors accuse major insurance companies of failing to pay funeral claims on time
Funeral directors have lashed out at the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, saying that it is partial in how it applies the law relating to the regulation of insurance claims. Mdu Masilela, President of the National Funeral Association of South Africa, says that funeral directors want to comply with the rules set out by the FSCA, but they want to also feel protected by it.
“We will be having a peaceful march to FSCA. We invite all the funeral directors who are part of us. The insurance as imposed on us by the FSCA requires us to underwrite in order to protect the consumers. We do underwrite and premiums are also paid on time. But the claims payouts are done very slowly. We want the FSCA as the mother body of the insurance companies to come and meet with us as funeral directors,” says Masilela.
Masilela says they are willing to comply, however, they want the compliance to work for both parties.
“We’re having a challenge because when you claim, you need to claim via the insurance companies, so the insurance companies, they now misuse the laws because whenever we complain to them they tell us about an FSCA. That is why today, we have decided that let us visit the mother body of the insurance so that this matter can be fixed and resolved. We do want to comply, however, we want this compliance to work for both parties,” says Masilela.
