AFA announces life company of the year

BT Financial Group was named Platinum Winner of the AFA/SI Life Company of the Year Award for 2016 at an event hosted by the AFA at the Hilton Sydney, according to a statement.

BT also took out the income protection award for its Income Protection Plus Plan product, the statement said.

TAL, MLC and ANZ’s OnePath were runners up for the Platinum Award.

Meanwhile, Zurich won two of the three client service team awards, including the Underwriting Award and the BDM/Business Support Award, while BT won the Claims Award.

BT head of life operations at Scott Moffitt said the awards recognise the life insurance team's efforts to be the market leader in both respects.

"The team at BT are very excited about winning the Life Insurance Company of the Year Award back-to-back," Mr Moffitt said.

"The three awards that BT collected together reinforce our longstanding dedication to giving quality service to our customers, particularly at claim time when it matters most, as well as our drive to bring to market the best products."

AFA chief executive Brad Fox said the awards are based on independent quantitative research conducted by Strategic Insight resulting from three separate investigations during the year.

“These awards are designed to encourage life insurers to invest in product and service innovation and to strive for excellence so that financial advisers can offer their clients the best possible risk protection,” Mr Fox said.

Strategic Insight head of sales, marketing and product development Rael Solomon said, “The retail life insurance market continues to be driven by a high level of competition between all life companies, resulting in innovation in not only products, but also in the aspects of underwriting, customer service and adviser training.

“Health and wellness has become a major theme and is already playing a part in the benchmarking which Strategic Insight applies to providers and their products.”