MetLife’s achievement in winning the trauma category of this year’s awards is all the more significant given that it didn’t even have a presence in the Australian market last year.
The company effectively bought its insurance business from Citigroup in July 2005, but since then has been making changes and enhancements to its inherited products and processes.
Among the first of these was to bring its administration back in-house to strengthen its service offering around the new products.
MetLife business manager, institutional business, Frank Dyer says this move was a “major factor in establishing our credentials as a serious player in the market among intermediaries and policyholders”.
Dyer says MetLife has also “moved quickly to build up quite a strong team of people who are specialists in their fields and well regarded in the market”.
At a product level, it has increased the maximum coverage under its Life Care Trauma plan to about $2 million last year.
Dyer says the changes are part of an ongoing review of MetLife’s products and services, which is about “making changes that are sensible for clients and advisers rather than just changing things for the sake of changing things”, he says.
Ongoing changes to “ensure the relevance” of definitions within AMP’s Trauma Cover Premier product has contributed to its second place in the category this year.
Chris Kirby, head of business development and marketing, life insurance, says a critical issue facing trauma product providers is ensuring their definitions remain relevant to consumers, planners and medical specialists supplying claims departments with information on the trauma event.
Kirby says AMP has “made changes to a number of product definitions to simplify the medical requirements, and there have also been a few new benefits added”.
A key change is the inclusion of a clause that says “consideration of rapid progress in diagnostic tools and treatment methods in some trauma conditions” could be used in an assessment of any claim beyond the guidelines provided in the definitions.
“What we are trying to do is break down some of the inflexible definitions in the contract, so that we can pay claims in line with the spirit of the contract.”
Third-placed CommInsure counts the “offer of many peripheral trauma conditions at no extra cost” as a key distinguishing feature of its Trauma Cover product.
These include conditions such as breast cancer and payments for loss of one limb, according to Clive Levinthal, general manager life, super and investment products.
CommInsure also pays out clients on 45 benefit definitions, which Levinthal says is “one of the highest in industry for covered conditions”.
