moneyblog

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. 

Reassessing what it means to be old

In comparison to previous years, people in wealthy countries are living for longer. Additionally, people aged over 65 are generally healthier and score higher on cognitive tests. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge for life insurance companies.

Click here to read more

The average Kiwi

The image of a typical New Zealander has been described as a myth, crazy, a cooked idea. Which it is. That doesn't mean it isn't fun. 

New Zealand has a slightly skewed sex ratio (in favour of more women, in contrast to much of Asia which has more men, probably due to some sex selection in the first trimester). So for a long time if you met a New Zealander, they were slightly more likely to be a woman than a man, which gives the lie to the images of the classic 'Kiwi bloke' as being the 'average' - the modal average is female. Carry that process to the extreme and you get the work done by Radio New Zealand, profiled in the video below: Using the 2018 census as a guide, Radio New Zealand put together a description of who the average New Zealander is, and found that:

• She is Pākehā,
• About 37
• Born in New Zealand
• Lives in Auckland
• Has a partner or spouse and lives in a house they own
• She drives a car most days to her full-time job
• Her highest qualification is high school
• She doesn't smoke
• She doesn't believe in any kind of god
• She most likely doesn't have children, but if she does, she's got two

This is slightly different to the average New Zealander from 2013, who:

• Rented
• Believe in a god

If you used mean values instead of modal ones you would come up with an even more ridiculous average. But we shall leave that to you. 

Click here to read more

Cyber Smart Week

Look we found a post about Cyber Smart Week that relates to insurance: AIA's Chief Technology Officer Shane Ohlin has put together this article showing the top 5 tips for being cyber smart. Of course, we all use technology and cloud services and this applies to all of us anyway. In an interesting social trend, 

Here are some other good resources:

• CertNZ have this cyber security quiz you can take to check out how good your cyber security habits are, and then it provides tips to improve your online safety
• The Economist has this piece on why so many people fall for financial scams
• The FMA has this piece on cold-callers with share scams - just to ensure that you don't fall for the idea that all scams are online

 

 

World Insurance Report interactive website

Here is a link to the World Insurance Report interactive website. This publication, by CapGemini, allows you to to dive deeper into evolving customer preferences, enhancing digital agility, digital agility maturity and future-ready operating models. The website features graphics that explore customer experience, BigTech disruptors and the importance of digital agility. 

Fake medical studies, conflicts of interest, and rationalisations

According to Dr Andrew Klein, a UK anaesthetist and editor-in-chief of the journal Anaesthesia, fake medical data is on the rise. He believes that there is about one fake medical study for every 40 papers submitted for publication. There is a data-pattern analysis technique they use to detect this and although they find the odd mistake they believe "nine times out of 10 people have clearly made their data up or changed their data. A lot of articles that we might have published before are now not going into the journal.” Click here to read more. 

I am going to file this under 'we are all subject to conflicts' and point out that even when the conflict is not about money - it may be solely about prestige, or pride, or just winning an argument - it can influence behaviour. Everyone is subject to these kinds of pressures - and what's interesting is that the people submitting articles to Klein's journal probably did not think they were doing anything wrong, or perhaps, not very wrong. Sometimes you hear people talk about what everyone 'everyone knows'. Then they get a set of data that doesn't fit the pattern, and they could think 'that can't be right' and instead of holding on to the question, they moved a data point or two...

Which is a caution to us all, to look at the data, not look for how the data supports the story we are already telling ourselves. 

Regulation, remediation, and digital advice process

There is a connection between regulation, remediation of clients that may have received poor or insufficient advice, and digital advice process. Good digital services, either no-advice or advice can be a powerful way to resolve the challenges of meeting conduct expectations and allowing the remediation of past advice without requiring a lot of in-person meetings. That can help advice businesses that have not been able to get a client to engage in a face-to-face review meeting for years, and allow the cost-effective engagement with clients that may have received no advice. If you want to know how, I've been putting together a guide to the principles, so drop me a line. 

New Zealand: a world leader in...

...house prices: link. 

Risk and return: an international comparison of term deposit rates

Check out David Chaston's comparison of international term deposit rates alongside the presence or absence of deposit insurance protection. Link. 

Can the world eradicate another disease?

Our world in data asks whether it is possible to eradicate another major disease: 

 

 

Wouldn't that be good? To find out more, click here.