OnePath has remained at the top of the insurance game over the past 12 months and has again been named Money Management/Dexx&r’s Risk Company of the Year.
While many sectors of the financial services industry struggled over the last few years, life insurance flourished.
According to research from Plan For Life, the industry recorded double digit growth (10 per cent) over the 12 months leading up to April, adding to the 13 per cent increase in inflows in 2011.
This could be attributed to investors’ need for protection in times of volatility, but huge inflows do not come easy and all major insurance companies are well aware of that.
They need to innovate and listen to their clients, lest advisers start looking elsewhere. Therefore, keeping product and service consistency is vital, according to ANZ Wealth head of retail risk, marketing and reinsurance, Gerard Kerr.
ANZ-owned OnePath has once again been named Money Management/Dexx&r Risk Company of the Year, also winning in two out of four other categories in this year’s awards.
While product quality is essential, it needs to be supported with cutting edge technology and adviser services, according to Kerr.
“You’ve got to have all those segments working together so that the advisers and consumers alike can get a collectively good experience,” he said.
“If we consistently continue to deliver that, then we give them a lot more comfort about placing their clients with us.”
Also retaining its position in the Adviser Choice Risk Awards was TAL, which won silver in the overall Risk Company of the Year category and gold for its disability income product.
A little more than a year ago, TAL went through an acquisition and a rebrand, successfully keeping focus on all dimensions of its offer to advisers, according to chief executive of retail life, Brett Clark.
Not unlike OnePath, TAL kept product appeal, technology and adviser and customer services at the heart of its operations, placing high value on its team.
“All the people in our business have a role to play and that is a strong message that I talk to the retail life team about all the time,” Clark said.
“It is not a question of whether you’re in product, customer service, claims or underwriting – everyone’s got a role to play.”
Similarly, BT Life has been working on reinforcing its relatively new end-to-end solution called BT Protection Plans, which was launched in February last year.
Head of life insurance at BT, Phil Hay said BT Protection Plans was launched following extensive market research, using a model applied by companies such as Apple.
“When Apple created an iPod, rather than going to the user and asking them about what they would like next, they watched the interface between the user and the music and created prototypes of what they believed would be tailor made for that user,” Hay said.
“If they asked them what they would like, consumers would say ‘I’d like a smaller CD’.”
BT used a similar model and worked with the financial advisers.
“Rather than asking them what they want, you’re asking them about their business, how it operates and how they operate with their client and then you build the whole end-to-end solution based on how they deal with their client,” he said.
Over the last year, BT has been looking at continuing to innovate and support planners, which earned them bronze in the Risk Company of the Year, trauma and business overhead categories.
Embracing the digital age
The past five years have seen a very dramatic digital shift across most industries.
This shift has somewhat changed the way in which financial advisers manage their clients’ risk policies and, as a result, risk companies had to move quickly to support them.
Many allow online applications, electronic signatures and phone claims.
Head of insurance at Macquarie Bank Justin Delaney said the bank received around 80 per cent of its business online, despite providing a number of alternative application options.
OnePath has recently launched its OneView Life system, which provides advisers with full access to the progress of their clients’ applications, or data download options for policyholders.
“It is speed and accuracy that we’re working on from the technology point of view and there is more to come,” Kerr said.
“One of the things we’re appreciating more and more is being part of the ANZ family and having access to all of that capability and technology, analytics and all of the things that are opening up opportunities for us.”
However, it is really important to have a strategy, rather than following the ‘intermediate trend’ blindly, according to AIA Australia head of product management for individual life, Tim Tez.
“Whatever we produce, we have to ensure it fits in with the advisers’ process,” Tez said.
“Yes, we get a lot through online channels, but we also provide offline capabilities.”
At the end of the day, according to Hay, the customer dictates how they will be dealt with.
“When we look at how we design solutions for a financial adviser, it’s making sure that they can keep pace and demonstrate their innovation.”
Adviser Choice Risk Awards: the judging process
A panel of experienced risk insurance advisers who have built practices specialising in the provision of life risk insurance advice were contacted during June 2012 and invited to complete a survey providing their feedback on:
- The relative importance of the features included in term, trauma, total and permanent disability, disability income, and business overheads insurance products;
- The relative importance of the definitions for core and supplementary conditions and events; and
- The weighting they believe should be applied between features and benefits, definitions and price (premiums) in each product category.
The adviser responses are then converted to a weighting for each item (determined by the average of the weightings nominated by the advisers) and combined with a weighted score from the previous year.
These scores are summed to give a total weighted score for each feature, benefit and definition.
These weightings are then applied to the Dexx&r Risk Ranking system to calculate a final weighted total score for each product. The products with the three highest scores in each product category are awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze.
