Retired Judge Margie Victor has been appointed as the ombudsman for the insurance industry, replacing Judge Ron McLaren.
Judge Victor’s term started on January 1 and will last two years.
Judge McLaren was the ombudsman from January 2020, when a single ombud was appointed to oversee the office of the Ombudsman for Short-term Insurance and the office of the Ombudsman for Long-term Insurance. Until then, he had been the long-term insurance ombudsman from June 2013.
Commenting on her appointment, Judge Victor said: “The offices of both the Ombudsman for Short-term Insurance and the Ombudsman for Long-term Insurance are accessible to all. We enhance consumer confidence and will strive to improve insurance services by sharing our insights. But above all, everything we do will be guided by our sense of fairness.”
A statement released on behalf of both offices said Judge Victor was “possessed of a ‘progressive’ approach” and strongly favoured social reform.
She qualified as a social worker and then as an attorney. She was called to the Johannesburg Bar to practise as an advocate. In 2008, after 25 years as an advocate, she was appointed as a judge of the Gauteng Local Division and was a judge of the Competition Appeal Court from 2015. In 2016, she served as Acting Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeal. In 2019, she was appointed as Acting Justice of the Constitutional Court until 2021.
Judge Victor was the first woman to be elected to the Johannesburg Bar Council in 1996, where “she led the call for gender and racial transformation in the leadership structures”.
During her career as an advocate, she assisted many abused women with legal advice. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she defended people accused of public violence and related issues. She also undertook an environmental law case assisting a community living in the shadow of an industrial mill.
As an Acting Justice of the Constitutional Court, she wrote a landmark judgment in 2020 enabling domestic workers to obtain compensation for workplace injuries or death.
