Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor on the ACC tightening up claims payouts

Reports reveal ACC is planning to be more scrupulous when paying claims, as the Government pressures it to run a tighter ship.

The state insurer has committed to “highly ambitious” targets around getting injured people rehabilitated and back to work quicker.

NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny explains further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now ACC is going to get much tighter with its
claims payouts in an attempt to reign in its massive deficit.
It's committed to what it says are highly ambitious targets
of reducing the number it supports via that weekly compensation.
Deny tib Traney is The Herald's Wellington Business editor and
with us elo Janey, when we say highly ambitious, how ambitious?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Quite ambitious. I've just looked through a long report that
ACC is put together. Basically, it aims to have the
growth rate of the pool of people it supports for
more than a year, so that at the moment that
is increasing by thirteen percent a year. It wants that
to increase by only six point six percent. Also, the

(00:45):
number of claims that ACC receives has been growing at
a faster rate than the population, so it wants to
stop that and actually bring it down below the population
growth rate. So I'm actually shocked by how large the
ACC scheme is. In the past year, It's it's dealt

(01:05):
with about two million claims. You know, it's a lot
of claims for a small country like New Zealand. So
I guess ACC is committing to really tightening its ship,
and that is because the government is putting pressure on
it to reiin in its costs and reduce the size
of its deficit.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
I mean, is the suggestion here that there are people
who are getting this weekly pay compensation who actually shouldn't
be getting it.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
There really is because for ACC to you know, reach
these targets that it's put down in this report. You
would imagine that if it was already operating really tightly,
then it wouldn't be able to do that because you know,
it needs to pay people in line with the law.
So without a law change, how does it cut its
cost this much? So you would imagine that there are

(01:52):
people receiving ACC who perhaps don't need to be I
think the government is really worried about people getting on
ACC and not coming off and staying on for a
long time. That's the group that it's really eyeing now.
ACC and the government they haven't gone so fast to say,
you know, people are ripping off the system, or that

(02:14):
ACC is not managing the system well enough and enabling
people to rip it off. But they have said a
few things like, you know, they want to make sure
that people are only receiving what they're entitled to so
the fact that it's pointing this out and this report
suggests that it's not being that well run. Also, they
want to look into increasing sanctions on people who don't

(02:38):
follow the rules.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Jinay, Now, you and I know that this is going
to get controversial, right because undoubtedly if you're kicking people
off who aren't supposed to be there, you're going to
make a few mistakes, and you're going to kick people
off who are supposed to be there, who've got amazing
SOB stories, who are going to go to the newspapers
about it, and it's going to be on the front page, right,
And so you need a minister handling this who is
nimble and able to be compassionate and do it properly.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Simson, that guy, Oh that's a that's a big question.
Scott Simson hasn't been in the role for that long,
so I won't pass judgment yet. He is due to
receive a couple of reports that his predecessor commissioned. So
and these reports, you know, there's are external reviews that

(03:20):
look into culture and claims, management and so on, So
that should inform you know, this turnaround plan that he's
working on. So while acc has all these targets. Scott
Simson in the coming months is due to release what
he's going to call a turnaround plan for ACC, So
I think we can look at that plan and judge,

(03:41):
you know, and judge him from there. I think this
will be a really major test for him.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, might well be gin. Thank you so much, as
per our generative. Charaney, the Herald's Wellington business editor.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
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