Insurer ASR starts paying compensation for high-interest life insurance policies

More than 90 percent of the participants in the policy claim regarding life insurance that had too high interest rates with an Aegon or ASR policy have agreed to their personal compensation proposal. This means that the minimum requirement for the implementation of the agreement that insurer ASR concluded in 2023 with claim associations ConsumentenClaim, Woekerpolis.nl, Woekerpolisproces, Wakkerpolis, and the Consumers' Association has been met. ASR can now start paying out the claims, it was announced on Wednesday.

Around 250 million euros were spent on the deal with the claim organizations, and ASR also set another 50 million euros aside for more severe cases and customers who were not connected to one of the claim organizations and had not been compensated before.

Chairman Jos Baeten announced that ASR will also implement its own compensation scheme. "That is how we will conclude this file for all stakeholders," he declared on Wednesday during the presentation of ASR's annual figures.

The compensation per policyholder varies from several hundred euros to one case, which is over 10,000 euros, Baeten estimated. The claim involved investment insurance policies from both ASR itself and Aegon, from which ASR previously acquired the Dutch insurance activities. According to Baeten, it involved a total of approximately 140,000 policies.

The consumer association emphasized that it can take a while before everybody has the money in their bank account. The association advised the people who have not accepted the offer yet to do so as soon as possible. In addition to ASR, the claim associations also reached settlements with Nationale-Nederlanden, Achmea, Reaal, and De Goudse.

"Hopefully, there will soon be clarity for participants with high-interest policies from these insurers," said Sandra Molenaar, director of the Consumers' Association.

The woekerpolicy affair kept the financial world busy for years. In 2006, it came to light that many investment insurance policies had been charged far too high costs since the 90s. Claims associations then repeatedly tried to mobilize victims to obtain compensation from insurers.