GIAB says people with disabilities not excluded from insurance coverage

The General Insurance Association of Barbados (GIAB) says insurance companies are not excluding people with disabilities from coverage.

That response from GIAB president Randy Graham came in response to complaints earlier this month from chairman of the Advisory Committee to Guide the Establishment of a Commission for Improving the Lives of Persons with Disabilities, Edmund Hinkson, that companies were discriminating against disabled persons seeking to get health, car insurance and property insurance.

However, in a brief statement issued on Monday, the GIAB said many of the 14 general insurance companies under its umbrella offer motor insurance to persons with disabilities, including the hearing impaired.

Clarifying that companies that sell general insurance, according to policies and procedures, underwrite each customer based on his/her own merit and opting not to comment publicly on any one particular case, Graham said: “Suffice it to say that motor insurance may be obtained from many of our insurance companies for hearing-impaired clients.”

The GIAB added that it stands ready to meet with any organisation to discuss and address their concerns. 

“Its membership is willing to contribute in a meaningful way to the advancement of the disabled community,” it added.

Speaking during a town hall meeting on the draft 2023-2030 National Policy for Improving the Lives of Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), Hinkson had said the problem of people with disabilities not getting insurance was an issue that he and his team – including Senator Andwele Boyce – had been heavily focused on for some time now, with the aim of rooting out discrimination.

“We met twice with insurance companies and we told them straight that this is an issue – health insurance for persons with disabilities, car insurance and property insurance. We have told them Barbados is signatory to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified it in 2013; we have obligations not to discriminate against people with disabilities, even in the absence of any law,” he said.

“We told them straight that they are discriminating against people with disabilities. Andwele would tell you, when we had the [PWDs policy] first scripted, and then in February and March went back to certain stakeholders and said this is what we have concluded, one insurance company – we not saying who – adamantly said we should change the wording of this particular thing, said ‘I don’t like this paragraph’. We told them we not changing this because it’s a fact of life that you all discriminate.” 

Hinkson said when the final draft of the National Policy for Improving the Lives of PWDs finally reaches Parliament, such discrimination will be addressed via legislation.

“In the draft legislation, there is provision that the premiums on insurance policies should be the same as for people without disabilities unless they can show by some actuarial reporting that they should be reasonably [charging] higher premiums to you. We have the draft legislation, Minister [of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Kirk Humphrey] says he hopes to bring it to Parliament during this financial year…. Hope is coming,” he said. (PR/BT)