The man in charge of overseeing NSW personal injury claims at the troubled state insurer iCare chairs two other companies in his spare time while being paid a $548,000 salary by taxpayers.
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ICare's interim group executive for personal injury claims, Rob Craig, told a fiery NSW parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday he is also the chair of Australian Payments Network and New Zealand fintech company Squirrel.
Greens politician David Shoebridge asked interim chief executive, Don Ferguson about the arrangement.
"If one of your executives is receiving more than half a million dollars in salary with a remuneration package under which they have previously received $870,000, don't you think it would be an expectation of the people of NSW that they would devote 100 per cent of their work effort to the job at iCare?", he said.
Mr Ferguson responded that he could not speak on behalf of the community's expectations but that Mr Craig had an "enormous capacity" for work.
The insurer has underpaid thousands of injured workers millions of dollars in compensation, it emerged earlier this year.
Former chief executive John Nagle was forced to resign in August after it was revealed he had not properly declared his wife's contract with the insurer.
The organisation's new chair, John Robertson, and board director and former head of risk, David Plumb also appeared on Wednesday before the Legislative Council's law and justice committee, which is investigating the state's workers' compensation scheme.
Mr Craig was given a delegated power to enter any contract on behalf of the insurer in relation to a particular project, the committee heard.
Mr Plumb said he was not aware of that delegated authority, despite having previously been head of the risk committee.
"You were kept in dark that a senior executive had the unlimited ability to contract on behalf of the nominal insurer," Mr Shoebridge said.
Mr Plumb later agreed that it was an "absolute weakness" that iCare's delegations allowed for some contracts to be signed off by only one individual.
Mr Shoebridge and Labor's Daniel Mookhey were also critical of iCare's tardiness in identifying which workers had been underpaid.
Since 2019, the insurer has reviewed 1900 cases of the approximately 12,000 it will need to investigate.
Injured workers can also come forward themselves to ask if they were underpaid.
Mr Shoebridge said figuring out if a person was underpaid was a "complex analysis" that an injured worker should not be expected to do.
"They don't have to believe they've been underpaid. If they want to ask the question, they can ask the question," executive Nick Allsop said.
Australian Associated Press
