moneyblog

Comparing your wealth to the global population

You are now able to enter your location and annual net income or wealth in a website to find out how rich you are in comparison to the global population. For calculation purposes, it is assumed that users work 40-hour weeks for 48 weeks of the year.

Click here to read more

Your best friend is worth $150,000

The increase in happiness associated with having a best friend is equivalent to something like an extra $150,000. Click here to listen what it’s really worth to have a best friend.

Accuro: Changes to its board and CEO

Geoff Annals has announced his retirement from CEO at Accuro stating “I have reached retirement age and am planning to spend more time with my family and particularly my two new grandchildren, including the latest arrival on the other side of the world,”. Gavin Rutherford will step up as the interim CEO.

Erica Hodgson, who has experience in the mental health sector, was elected as a new member of the board, replacing Pat Curry. Accuro deputy chair Marion Guy was re-elected to the board by the firm’s membership for a second three-year term. Toni Ferrier is stepping down from the Accuro board to serve as the chief executive officer of AIG New Zealand.

Asteron Life adds shield to website to aid victims of domestic abuse

Suncorp, Vero and Asteron Life are now part of the "shielded Sites" network. Shielded sites is an initiative aimed at helping New Zealanders experiencing domestic violence to safely gain support. Visitors to the websites are able to click on the Shielded Site icon to access information that can help them live a violence-free life without websites being visited showing in their browser history. This is a great initiative - ideally almost every high-traffic consumer site will do this, so people trapped in households with domestic violence and controlling family members will be able to see how and where they can get help safely. Click here to read more. 

UPDATED - CoFI introduced to Parliament

The daily progress report for parliament yesterday shows the introduction into Parliament today of the Financial Markets (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment Bill.

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/daily-progress-in-the-house/daily-progress-for-wednesday-11-december-2019/

The draft bill can be found on the legislation.govt.nz site - or you can just download your copy at this link. Download Financial Markets Conduct of Institutions Amendment Bill

David Chaplin has his brief take on it all at this link: https://investmentnews.co.nz/investment-news/fair-cop-government-sneaks-in-conduct-bill-before-year-end/ 

Reinsurers Pressure Life Insurers Over Vaping Health Risks

According to this article "Global reinsurers are stepping up their warnings to life insurer clients about the potential risks of vaping, putting pressure on underwriters to charge certain vapers higher rates than smokers, or even exclude them altogether."

This is a direct consequence of dozens of cases of lung disease in young people in the United States, apparently linked to vaping. The lack of sufficient objective data is a concern. Initially, indications were that vaping, if adopted by smokers, showed a dramatic reduction in disease rates. But it now seems that quality problems, and adoption by young, formerly non-smokers, could mean that vaping results in an increase in harm. Only time will tell. 

Aviva’s growth strategy: divide and conquer

Aviva has decided to split its business into five divisions, Investment; Savings and Retirement; UK Life; General Insurance; Europe Life; and Asia Life. Revealing that it is going sell its share in Hong Kong joint venture, Blue, to Hillhouse Capital, and it that it is in deliberation with partners over the future of its Vietnam business and an Indonesian joint venture. Click here to read more.

A theme for the insurance sector over the past five years or so has been a return to focus. Banks have sold insurers to specialists, and specialists, like Aviva, have been seeking further focus, acknowledging big differences in markets and categories. 

Australia: nib in $20m JV with US health giant Cigna

nib and Cigna have joined forces to create a data science and services company to help catch health issues earlier and cut down on costly hospitalisations.

Click here to read more. 

Merger between HealthLink and Konnect NET

Below is the release about the merger between HealthLink and Konnect NET:

PRESS RELEASE

9 December 2019

HealthLink and Konnect NET to merge to form Clanwilliam Health

Auckland-based healthcare technology companies HealthLink and Konnect NET are merging to form a new organisation named Clanwilliam Health.

The merger will take place over December 2019 and January 2020 and will see Konnect NET staff move from their Freemans Bay office to HealthLink’s current premises in Newmarket.

Clanwilliam Health will be led by the same team that has successfully led both HealthLink and Konnect NET for several years.

Michelle Creighton, CEO of HealthLink, will serve as CEO of Clanwilliam Health and Mike Weiss, CEO of Konnect NET, will serve as deputy CEO. They will be supported by a leadership team drawn from both businesses.

HealthLink and Konnect NET have been part of the Dublin-headquartered Clanwilliam Group family of businesses since 2017 and 2018 respectively.

Beginning in 2017, Clanwilliam Group has invested in excess of NZ$100 million in the Australasian healthcare technology market. Clanwilliam Group remains committed to investing in strong and innovative healthcare technology businesses that support clinicians in delivering great care to their patients.

Clanwilliam Health will be the anchor for Clanwilliam Group’s continued growth, innovation and investment in the Australasian market.

 

Stronger together

Combining the strengths of two great companies will create a financially stronger business that is better able to invest in its products, people and customer service.

It will be business as usual for HealthLink and Konnect NET customers with no change to the current products, services and support.

Ms Creighton says the merger formalises the sense of partnership the two organisations already enjoy.

“It’s the blending of two teams who share a common vision of innovation to improve patient outcomes. Together we can better execute Clanwilliam Group’s vision of making healthcare better for everyone.”

She says together they will strengthen their solution offerings to the sector.

“We’re already capitalising on that with a joint development project that we look forward to sharing with the market in 2020.”

 

Best of both businesses

Mr Weiss says the drive behind both HealthLink and Konnect NET is to create better health outcomes for patients.

“We have passionate people from both organisations who already share this common purpose.”

He says they have the support of a great leadership team to capitalise on the best of what both businesses have to offer.

“The extensive network reach and platform capabilities of HealthLink offers Konnect NET even greater opportunity to add value to our SureMed customers.”

About:

HealthLink:

The market leading healthcare system integrator in Australia and New Zealand.

Nearly all secure clinical communications across the New Zealand healthcare system are carried via HealthLink and it’s the largest provider of secure clinical messaging services in Australia.

Konnect NET:

Konnect NET was established in 2008 and its SureMed product is used by major New Zealand insurers to manage health information requests for underwriting and claims. Konnect NET has a growing presence in the Hong Kong market.

For more information please contact:

Maggie McNaughton

HealthLink & Konnect NET publicist

021 613198

maggie@healthycomms.co.nz

ENDS

 

Partners Life announces a long list of product enhancements

Partners Life has an impressively long list of policy wording changes made. Arguably, each of the individual items is small, and some merely clarify, but in sum the changes are significant, and clarity is good and should always be an aim. I particularly liked the change to the intensive care benefit, as an example, as I saw a particularly unfortunate claim where the client failed to meet the strict definition, but should have qualified. This change makes that unfortunate circumstance less likely. I also liked the changes to definitions of income and full time. The addition of the change to include removal of a major portion of the colon is a valuable addition to the loss of a major organ schedule, and increasingly common in the case of bowel cancer. 

You can find full details of the changes at this link here.

Partners Life have released this video summarising some of the most significant product changes made effective 9 December.

Australia: Insurers lose $3.4b because of disability income insurance

Collectively life insurance companies have lost close to $3.4 billion over the past five years as a result of the sale of disability income insurance to individuals. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is responding to ongoing losses of insurance companies by introducing capital charges, this will require life insurers to look into product design and pricing flaws. It will also require us to do the same, for although our IP experience is nothing like as bad as Australia's, that's no cause for complacency. People and policies are similar - and therefore have similar motivations and incentives.I would hate to see how our in-force IP book responds to an economic downturn. 

Click here to read more

Australia: ASIC set to ban cold calling

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is set to ban cold calling for life and consumer credit insurance sales from January 2020. This has change has been justified as addressing poor sales practices that ASIC believes has led to unfair consumer outcomes. This ban will not apply if the marketer provides the person they are calling with personal advice. It is another sign of the shift in conduct expectations that creates an incentive for a financial provider to choose to step into advice provision and the supervisory regime that surrounds it. We may experience similar incentives in this market. Click here to read more

 

South Africa: family take corpse to insurance company

A grieving family in South Africa took the corpse of their dead relative to the insurance company office after the insurer delayed payment of funeral insurance without sufficient paperwork to prove he was dead. "We thought if the documents do not give them enough answers then maybe the body will."

Click here to read more. 

I am so grateful that we live in a country with little corruption that documents and officials are generally believed, and virtually every life insurance claim is paid, and paid quickly. 

 

 

The missing customers, the missing new business

This article from The Economist discusses how companies from Silicon Valley are creating products that are much more suited to males than females, alienating half of their potential customers. This is in some surprisingly obvious ways: most mobile phones and gaming devices are simply too big for most women's hands to use with as much comfort and utility as the average man using the same device. This is my my wife persists with her ancient, but correctly sized, iphone SE, rather than choosing to upgrade. It's a huge lost opportunity. If you read the article you can easily feel smug - as I did - about the silly mistakes these silicon valley geniuses make - like trusting the design decisions to teams that are 75% male. But there's another part of me worrying - what are we missing? Here are two examples: 

We're missing out on women. Looking at several hundred thousand quotes, 43% of quotes arose from couples and 57.4% arose from quotes for single adults. Men were quoted for insurance on their own at a rate twice that of women. Increasing the engagement of women quoting alone to that of men would be a 20% boost to quotes for the industry. In the advised channel we are not quoting single women as often, and when we look at cover levels for women, they remain lower than for men. Remember that with declining marriage rates women tend to remain single, or if in relationship, financially independent, for longer, which expands the impact of this industry weakness. There is nothing like this skew in direct insurance.

In Auckland we're also missing out on adequately serving the multi-adult household, which now accounts for 30% of all households in this region, by featuring mainly traditional families. We're missing out on women, big time. The  We're missing out on genuine connection to client needs - by talking about insurance all the time, and not about health, risk, or the great purpose of financial risk transfer. Where there are people with a financial dependence on each other, there is usually a need for insurance. Marketing to that segment with a new solution to the challenge of making sure the benefit goes for its intended purpose would help. 

There are more, and they require detailed evaluation. The solutions to accessing ignored segments is not straightforward. All change is difficult. It's an example, however, that the industry needs to change to reflect changes in society around us. While it might be embarrassing to be talking about selling more to single women in 2019, it would be even more embarrassing to be still talking about it as a problem in 2029. While the housing crisis has been in the news almost every week for the last five years, we do not appear to have recognised one of the most obvious consequences: more shared housing. 

More details will be in the Quarterly Life and Health Sector report. 

 

Chatswood premium comparison database v107

A new version of the premium comparison database has been released. The most interesting part of the release is the new 'Price Change History' feature. There is a new button labelled ‘Price Change History’ in the menu - see image below. 

This opens a list of historical price changes, which can be easily searched by Benefit, Company and Date. So, for example, you can see what price changes have been made to Income Protection benefits over time, or the change history for a particular company. 

Insurance Law Reform Intentions Announced

Minister's announcement can be found at this link: https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/insurance-contracts-become-easier-understand-and-fairer-consumers

Changes the Government has agreed on include:

• Placing the responsibility on insurers to ask consumers the right questions when processing new insurance policies, rather than leaving it to consumers to know what to tell their insurer
• Requiring insurance policies to be written and presented clearly, so that consumers can easily understand them
• Ensuring insurers respond proportionately when consumers don’t disclose something they should have, or misrepresent themselves
• Strengthening protections for consumers against unfair terms in insurance contracts
• Extending powers to the Financial Markets Authority to monitor and enforce compliance with new requirements

Most of this is uncontroversial in concept. Much of it is recognition of current practice. But the challenge, as always, is in the details. There is broad potential to get bad law from good ideas. That is why it is particularly good to hear that there will be more consultation than it was suggested at one stage. 

MBIE's page with a lot more detail is at this link: https://www.mbie.govt.nz/business-and-employment/business/financial-markets-regulation/insurance-contract-law-review/ 

Why are Americans dying younger?

The Economist has this article on the curious decline in life expectancy in the United States. It's complicated, but apparently systemic, and clustered in economically deprived areas of the country. Link. 

Australia: compliance is 15% of the cost of advice

Angela Martyn, a financial planner in Melbourne has revealed that her practice spends $4.50 for every $100 of revenue on compliance – including personal indemnity insurance, industry memberships, audits and training. Martyn has said that personal indemnity insurance makes up much of the cost. The labour required for these things is $9 of every $100 of revenue. Additionally, she spends $1.50 per $100 revenue on marketing. Martyn has said that she expects that compliance spending will increase to 15% – 17% of their revenue. Or put it another way, 15% of the cost of advice will be compliance. 

Quotemonster's latest news

In case you missed it here is a link to the most recent Quotemonster newsletter with all the latest news on changes and additions to the site. 

Fidelity Life: Life Insurance Company of the Year .... again!

Congratulations to Fidelity Life for taking home the ANZIIF Life Insurance Company of the Year for the third consecutive year. 

Fidelity's Head of Strategic Allilances, Ben Holloway also won Young Insurance Professional of the Year (pictured below with Nadine Tereora).