A husband and wife made a claim to an insurance company following a fire at their business premises. They later found out that two people had separately approached the insurance company and alleged the couple had deliberately lit the fire. The insurance company investigated the matter and discounted the allegations. The couple's claim was accepted by the company.

The couple requested access to the names of the informants under principle 6. The company refused to release the names because the information was 'given and held in confidence'.

This complaint raised an issue under s 27(1)(c) of the Privacy Act which provides that an agency may refuse to disclose information if disclosure would be likely:

(c) To prejudice the maintenance of the law including the prevention, investigation and detection of offences, and the right to a fair trial.

I consider that in some cases this section includes situations where the agency holding the information is in the private sector and does not have law enforcement powers. I accepted that this was one of those cases on the basis that:

(1) While the insurance company did not have any law enforcement powers, it was a natural first contact point for information regarding potential insurance fraud following the fire. In this case the company was the agency which would carry out an initial investigation to determine whether to accept the claim. If the investigation had concluded the claim was probably fraudulent, the company would then have passed the information on to the police to take law enforcement action. The police would, in turn, rely on the informant's information to maintain the law by further investigating and then prosecuting the offender. The insurance company essentially acts as a conduit for information from informants to the Police. (2) If insurance companies could not withhold details of the identity of informants in such circumstances, the flow of information upon which the Police rely would be adversely affected as informants might be unwilling to come forward. This would be likely to prejudice the maintenance of the law in relation to crimes of that nature.

The application of s 27(1)(c) is not dependent on the truth or accuracy of the information. As in this case, information can prove to be incorrect and require no further attention.

In these circumstances, I formed the opinion that releasing identifying information about the informants would have been likely to prejudice the maintenance of the law and that the insurance company had a proper basis to withhold it from the complainants. I concluded that there had not been an interference with the complainants' privacy.

July 1997

Indexing terms: Access to information identifying an informant - Insurance company - Privacy Act, s27(1)(c) - information privacy principles 6