Line Honours for Lumley
Money Management/Dexx&r Adviser Choice Risk Awards
Risk Company of the Year
Winner: Lumley Life
Finalist: Promina (RSA)
Finalist: MLC
LUMLEY Life has won the inauguralMoney Management/Dexx&rRisk Company of the Year Award.
Dexx&r managing director Mark Kachor says Lumley took line honours for its strong product suite.
“Lumley has highly competitive products across the range — that’s what gets it the award,” he says.
“The products have a wide range of features and are competitively priced.”
Kachor says the result is not surprising given that Lumley is one of only three pure risk specialists (along withAXAand Australian Casualty and Life) in the Australian market.
“Lumley has had a strong range for some time. It has always been around best practice and its options have always been innovative right across its range. Although it hasn’t added a lot of new features recently, it has been innovative in the past,” he says.
Kachor cites Lumley’s disability product, Optimal, as an example.
“The industry cut back on some of the benefits included in disability products — for example, guaranteed income. Instead of going down that route, Lumley introduced Optimal, a lower, more restrictive product. Optimal only pays for some disabilities up to age 70 and in problem areas, where there is a lot of difficulty getting a diagnosis, it limits the payments to two years. It was the first to go in and address these issues.”
Lumley, which is up for sale, is also a provider of product for a number of non-life offices andAsgard. The Asgard product took third place in the awards for Term and Total and Permanent Disability (TPD).
Howard Davy, Lumley Life’s sales and marketing general manager, attributes the group’s success to its close relationship with the industry.
“We are risk specialists. When we look at product development, as well as inviting in the necessary players like actuaries, reinsurers, underwriters and chief medical officers, we also invite in advisers.”
Lumley Life does not have a tied agency force and distributes its products entirely through the independent adviser network.
“We build our products in conjunction with advisers who bring to the table the needs of the clients, so we build products that are client focused as opposed to taking a back-office, research-type approach,” Davy says.
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