RACQ chair resigns amid $220m insurance stuff-up

RACQ chair Elizabeth Jameson has stepped down from her $414,000 position at the motoring giant as it tries to recover from a $220m insurance premium snafu.

RACQ chair Elizabeth Jameson has stepped down from her $414,000 position at the motoring giant moves to recover from a costly $220m insurance premium snafu.

Ms Jameson, who has served on the board of RACQ for the past 14 years and the last two as chair, was replaced by her deputy Leona Murphy after this week’s annual general meeting. Ms Jameson was only two years into her three-year term but denied her early departure was due to the insurance premium issue.

It has been a tough year for the RACQ that announced it will refund half a million of its members a total of up to $220m after they did not get promised discounts on their insurance premiums. The motoring and insurance group said that it had self-reported a regulatory breach to ASIC after finding some of the wording in its product disclosure statements “was inadequate in describing how several of our discounts were applied to premiums.”

RACQ chief executive David Carter said in August that the total refund to members was estimated to be in the range of $200-$220m, including applicable duties, taxes and interest.

Ms Jameson said it was the right time to start the process of board transformation. “Given my tenure as president and chair only permits me to serve in this role for up to one more year, I believe now is the right time to hand over the reins,” Ms Jameson said.

Elizabeth Jameson

“This will leave the path clear for the new president and chair to guide it through the multi-year transformation that has just begun.” Ms Jameson’s remuneration for serving as chair of the club as well as its insurance and banking businesses totalled $414,253 in 2021/2022.

Ms Jameson told the annual general meeting that the “club sustained some heavy hits this past financial year” with flooding events and the discovery of several material regulatory breaches in the insurance business. RACQ’s insurance posted an after-tax loss of $236m.

“We identified several regulatory breaches in relation to our pricing disclosure practices

extending back several years,” she told the meeting. “Whilst this was deeply disappointing, importantly we identified and self-reported these unintentional disclosure breaches as soon as possible to the corporate regulator, ASIC.

“As you would rightly expect, this has occupied an incredibly large amount of the

board and management’s time, as we work to prioritise and resolve these matters

through refunds to eligible members, with assistance from external experts.

“From the perspective of the responsibility and accountability of the board, we have

looked inward to identify the root causes of these occurrences at both a

governance and management level.”

Ms Murphy, who has served on the RACQ board since 2018 and has been vice president and deputy chair since 2020, says “there is much work to do” at the motoring body.

“I am excited to be working with my fellow board members and group David Carter as we begin our multi-year transformation to become a better, stronger, future-focused member-centric organisation,” she says.

Originally published as RACQ chair resigns amid $220m insurance stuff-up