The Antitrust fined 2.5 million euros Rbm Healthone of the companies in the group Intesa Sanpaolo which deals with insurance and specializes in the healthcare sector. According to the Agcm, there would have been serious delays in customer refunds, as well as unjustified rejections of refund requests.
Another company was also fined, Previmedical, to whom the group had entrusted the settlement of refunds. The main problems would be related to the fund Metahealth, to which just under half of the total complaints would be addressed. Intesa Sanpaolo responded by underlining that complaints are decreasing and that the company is therefore already working on solving the problem identified by the Antitrust.
The Antitrust fine to Rbm Salute
Competition and Market Authority o Agcm, more commonly known as Antitrust, fined a company of the Intesa Sanpaolo group that deals with health insurance. This is Rbm Salute, which among others also manages the fund Metahealth. The fine was the consequence of reports from many customers that they would have received the refunds due late or would have had their requests bounced without a valid reason.
According to what was explained by the Antitrust, Rbm Health: “It constitutes an unfair commercial practice because it has been ascertained that they have hindered the exercise of consumers’ contractual rights, making the use of insurance benefits onerous”. The authority then specified the situation concerned Previmedical: “Problems have emerged at the operations center of Previmedical (occurred at the end of 2022) which led, starting from the first months of 2023, to the accumulation of a very high number of cases awaiting processing, significantly behind the settlement times provided for by the respective health policies”.
The fine amounts are relatively moderate. TO Rbm Health, which is part of the Intesa Sanpaolo group, 2.5 million euros were imposed. TO Previmedical instead, which deals with the settlement of refunds but is not part of the group, 1 million euros. Rbm salute would be responsible: “for the failure to implement an effective control system on the claims management activity by its provider, in order to prevent and manage any critical issues and guarantee its insured an adequate level of service”.
Intesa Sanpaolo’s response
Intesa Sanpaolo did not delay in responding to the decision of theAntitrust. Among the data consulted to impose the fine there are also those from the Institute for Insurance Supervision (IVASS), which however would also signal a favorable trend for the two companies. In fact, Rbm Salute is already solving these problems and this, according to what the group reported, would make the fine superfluous.
The data Ivass in fact they would signal a clear decline in complaints already underway starting from the beginning of last year, 2023. Furthermore, even in the first months of this year, customer complaints would be decreasing, in line with the previous 12 months. Especially the bottom Metahealth, which accounts for almost half of the total complaints reported to Rbm Salute, saw a 35% drop in reports from customers. A figure that would also be confirmed in the first two months of 2024.
