TAL has taken home the gold in the disability income product category of this year’s Money Management/DEXX&R Adviser Choice Risk Awards.
According to TAL chief executive for retail life, Brett Clark, the Accelerated Protection Income Protection Premier product provides a suite of benefits that will meet almost all circumstances that a client can confront.
“It is high-end, highly tailored and provides lots of options for advisers to talk to their customers about,” said Clark.
He was quick to praise the efforts of the entire TAL retail life team.
“It’s not a question of whether you’re in product, customer service, claims or underwriting – everyone’s got a role to play,” Clark said.
TAL has also focused closely on improving its technology offering, considering that both clients and advisers expect to deal with their insurer digitally, he added.
“We certainly have a strong strategy around technology and technology delivery to advisers to ensure we are easy to do business with and that their customers and our customers can get covered as quickly as possible,” Clark said.
The silver award in the category was won by Asteron Life for the Asteron Life Complete – Income Protection Booster product.
Asteron Life executive manager for national sales, Mark Vilo, said the company has spent the last 18 months redeveloping its portfolio of products.
“Our existing range was a little bit complex, so what we decided to do was to implement this new range and basically simplify the existing portfolio but retain what we thought were the benefits that are most important to advisers and their clients,” Vilo said.
Asteron offers both standard and comprehensive income protection products to clients.
“People who want to buy the product with all the bells and whistles can actually do that, but we also wanted to make sure that there was a good, strong, comprehensive standard product that was affordable,” Vilo said.
Product development is a continual process for Asteron, with the company’s national board and state advisory boards meeting twice a year.
“A lot of the ideas that we actually implement in our product suite are often driven from the feedback we get directly from advisers,” Vilo said.
Rounding out the top three in the disability income product category is AIA Australia, who took home the bronze award with its Priority Protection – Income Protection Advantage product.
AIA Australia head of product management for individual life, Tim Tez, says his company has been working to improve its definitions so that customers will be given “the benefit of the doubt”.
“They get to choose between three definitions at the point of claim, whether it be income, duties-based or hours-based, and we’ll assess them on whatever maximises their monthly benefit under that claim,” Tez said.
