Proceedings
The Technical Secretariat, an organisational unit of IVASS, undertakes support activities for the President and the AAS Panel and prepares the complaint file.
1. Preliminary checks
The Technical Secretariat verifies the thoroughness, regularity and timeliness of the documentation submitted. If the documentation is incomplete or illegible, you will be asked to supplement it within 10 days.
If the outcome of the checks, even following the requests for additional documents, is negative, you are informed that the complaint is inadmissible and why.
You can file a new complaint on the same dispute only if the previous complaint was declared inadmissible due to a defect which can be remedied (e.g., incomplete or illegible documentation, lack of the claim) and always within the time limit of 12 months from the date of submission of the claim.
2. Cross-examination phase
The Technical Secretariat shall:
- forward the complaint to the insurance company and/or intermediary, which has 40 days to submit its defence brief;
- make the defence brief available on the Portal for the complainant, who has 20 days to reply;
- forward the reply to the insurance company or intermediary, which may in turn reply with a rejoinder within 20 days.
Warning: the time limits are mandatory. Late document submissions are not taken into account for the decision.
The Technical Secretariat, following receipt of the defence brief, reply and rejoinder, or after the deadlines for their presentation have elapsed, communicates to the parties the date on which the file has been sent to the Panel.
3. Decision
The complete file is transmitted by the Technical Secretariat to the Panel, which must decide the complaint within 90 days. This deadline may be extended up to an additional 90 days for particularly complex disputes.
The Panel normally decides on the basis of the law, applying the provisions of the laws, regulations, recommendations and other general measures governing the matter.
In certain cases, it may decide on an equitable basis, which means settling the claim or determining the benefit by seeking, whenever possible, a solution that is fair and reasonable for all parties involved, taking account of the specificities of each case and relying on the documents submitted by the parties and on the defences made (refer to the FAQs for more information).
The decision is made on an equitable basis:
- always, if the complaint concerns the request for a sum of money as compensation for damage from civil liability and is filed by the injured party who has a direct right of action against the insurance company (as in the case of MTPL policies);
- at the joint request of the parties, when the complaint concerns the settlement of damages or the determination of the benefit due.
The decision and the reasons for it are notified through the Portal.
The proceedings are also concluded when:
- the parties accept the conciliation proposal by the Panel;
- the parties autonomously reach an agreement and promptly notify the Technical Secretariat;
- the complainant withdraws the complaint (the withdrawal is possible until the Panel's decision);
- the Panel notes that the decision on the complaint requires preliminary investigations that the AAS cannot arrange and declares the complaint inadmissible.
If the complaint is upheld, even if only partially, the undertakings and the intermediaries must comply within 30 days of its notification. If they do not do so, the non-compliance is published on the dedicated page on this website and on the company's and/or intermediary's website, or is posted on their premises if they do not own a website, and the Technical Secretariat is notified accordingly. Failing this, this fact is recorded on the AAS’s website.
The parties may ask for the correction of material errors such as a calculation error, typo or formal inaccuracy, within 30 days of the communication of the decision, including the reasoning. However, it is not possible to ask the AAS to reconsider the merits of the case.