An Indigenous woman has emotionally criticised an insurer during the banking royal commission, saying it misled her when it signed her up to a costly funeral policy that targeted Indigenous communities.
Tracey Walsh signed up to a policy with the Aboriginal Community Benefit Fund in 2005 at the age of 40 with a maximum benefit of $8000.
She paid more than $36 a fortnight for more than a decade equating to more than $10,000 in premiums.
She became worried her funeral insurance was not adequate when her own parents died and tried to lift her cover, but ACBF would not do it.
Bryn Jones from funeral insurer ACBF. Source: AAP
She then engaged the Consumer Action Legal Centre and discovered the ACBF was not an Indigenous organisation.
Ms Walsh said her country Victorian Yorta Yorta community believed the company was Indigenous and represented her people, containing images of the rainbow serpent and Aboriginal families and art on its materials.
She also believed the product was a savings plan, in which her money was put away for a funeral and was horrified to discover she would lose her benefits if she missed any payments.
"I felt like they had me over a barrel," she told the commission in Darwin.
A complaint and claim was lodged with the Financial Ombudsman, which ACBF's lawyers initially resisted and described as "vexatious and an abuse of process".
However, the insurer settled, increasing Ms Walsh's cover to $10,000 and allowing her to stop making payments, having handed over more than $10,000 already.
Ms Walsh said through tears she was angry while looking at ACBF chief executive Bryn Jones.
"I've got elders that have been in these funeral funds for years and they plan to give the money to their families so they can survive," she said.
ACBF has a reputation for aggressively selling to Indigenous people, including children, for whom the funeral and rituals associated with death are a major cultural and community event.
It was previously found to have breached corporate anti-hawking laws in the Federal Court.
Senior counsel assisting the commission Rowena Orr QC said in the hearing that of ACBF's 13,000-odd policies, 4900 hundred were to children and another 2000 to people aged 18 to 25.
Mr Jones said in evidence that the company did not target children and that the high number of youths and minors with policies reflected the high mortality rate among Aboriginal people and what they wanted.
