Insurance agents, rescue workers and others impacted by vehicle-related accidents were briefed on coming changes to Thailand’s insurance laws.
Chonburi Deputy Gov. Pornchai Kwansakul outlined changes by Thailand’s Office of Insurance Commission (OIC), Chonburi office, June 13. He said the agency is making changes to insurance regulations and offerings this summer to improve Thailand’s woeful highway death and injury rate.
Chonburi Deputy Gov. Pornchai Kwansakul outlines changes by Thailand’s Office of Insurance Commission.
The biggest changes will come to the country’s compulsory car insurance program, which currently pays 100,000 baht to permanently disabled car-crash victims or families of dead drivers. Beginning in July, these benefits are set to increase to 300,000 baht. Premiums are not expected to increase, Pornchai said.
The OIC is also working with the Central Garage Insurance Association to improve car inspections so as to set standard rates or repairs at reasonable prices and improve quality of service.
Voluntary car insurance programs are also seeing changes, including the “Takaful” minor accident, minor daily health compensation and ordinary life insurance-savings type policies, Pornchai said.
Prominent among the changes is a switch to newer mortality tables that will give better insurance-coverage options to Muslims in Thailand’s strife-torn southern provinces. The last changes in mortality tables came in 1997, before the resurgence in southern bloodshed that has left nearly 7,000 Muslims dead.
Pornchai also noted that the OIC Office has improved its conflict-resolution process, saying that if cases cannot be solved in arbitration, a new reconciliation process can be used to settle problems.
For more information contact the Insurance Hotline at 1186.
