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Insurer loses customers after orgy scandal

Published: 16 Jul 11 12:56 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/money/20110716-36333.html

Insurance company Ergo lost several hundred customers after revelations about a sex orgy with employees and prostitutes in Budapest in 2007, the company head admitted Saturday.

"In concrete terms we've lost around 500 customers," Ergo boss Torsten Oletzky told the Rheinische Post newspaper.

Ergo hit the headlines earlier this year when it was revealed that its subsidiary Hamburg-Mannheimer had thrown a sex party with prostitutes for its sales reps in the historic Gellert health spa in Budapest, Hungary.

The company was then hit by news that thousands of customers' pensions contracts contained erroneous data.

Business daily Handelsblatt reported in June that at least 70,000 customers who signed up in 2005 and 2006 for Hamburg-Mannheimer’s Kaiser-Rente programme – which were part of the company’s Riester-Rente offerings – were charged markedly higher administrative fees than outlined in contracts.

The company may have wrongly raked in millions due to the widespread overcharging, the newspaper reported.

"We've just received an interim report from the auditors at PriceWaterhouseCoopers," Oletzky said on Saturday. "We're expecting a concluding report at the beginning of August."

The company has also been dogged by allegations of giving questionable advice in its accident insurance policies.

Ergo's parent company Munich Re has backed Oletzky as the right man to clean up the company's image, and has consistently said it would not sell the concern.

DAPD/bk

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

13:12 July 16, 2011 by Englishted
The customers voted with their willies .
10:01 July 17, 2011 by heyheyhey
@Englishted

If you only had a brain...........
17:45 July 18, 2011 by Englishted
@heyheyhey

@Englishted

If you only had a brain...........

Did you run you vocabulary dry?
15:08 July 21, 2011 by dbert4
It's really none of their customers business. That is a company that knows how to party.
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