For six years, Allianz Australia's website told the two million people buying its travel insurance that they would be covered "wherever you're travelling, whatever your needs". They weren't.
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The claim was one of a long list of incorrect, misleading and deceptive statements on its website about travel and home insurance that the insurer knew about but failed to take down until recently.
It was more important to protect its bottom line than to stop misleading customers, the insurer reluctantly admitted at the banking royal commission.
Most of the problems followed a December 2015 website upgrade but the inquiry on Monday heard some of the incorrect travel insurance statements were on the site for six years.
Allianz finally took down its offending website pages in June and reported breaches of financial services laws to the regulator.
More than two million travel insurance policies were issued by Allianz and its underwriter AWP between December 2015 and June this year.
The company has not yet contacted customers to tell them about the problems or determined the number of people who were affected.
It is working with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on a remediation program.
Allianz was contravening financial services laws every day the website's misleading and deceptive statements remained accessible to the public, the inquiry heard on Monday.
Allianz executive Michael Winter conceded the company did not care enough or take the matter seriously enough to fix the website.
Senior counsel assisting the commission Rowena Orr QC said taking down the website would have cost the business money and at Allianz it was more important to protect the bottom line than to stop misleading customers.
Mr Winter initially disagreed, before conceding that in this instance that was the case.
Allianz Australia's chief general manager of retail distribution was repeatedly questioned about what the insurer did and did not tell ASIC and when, as well as over the information it provided to the royal commission.
Earlier this month Allianz admitted to ASIC that its partner websites, which number about 70 and include airline and travel agency sites, contained incorrect or potentially misleading statements about travel insurance.
One of the Allianz website claims from 2012 was that its comprehensive travel insurance covered "wherever you're travelling, whatever your needs", despite the policy excluding areas for which DFAT had issued travel warnings.
It also claimed overseas medical assistance was unlimited when that was not the case.
Mr Winter said Allianz had not had a process of a regular ongoing review of website content.
The royal commission heard the travel issues were among 120 unique errors on its website, also affecting home insurance such as a claim that it guaranteed the quality of repairs when it did not.
Australian Associated Press
