Taking action on the insurance reforms

The new industry-wide life insurance reforms are not without challenges, particularly for advisers. At AIA Australia, we recognise that there will be significant impacts for advisers.

While we don’t want to lose sight of the focus to increase the accessibility and affordability of life insurance for Australians, we also want to ensure that there is a sustainability of advice businesses to support the framework.

We want to discuss what happens next – specifically, how we as insurers can support our adviser partners to transition to the Life Insurance Framework as smoothly and efficiently as possible in the lead-up to 1 January.

Rather than formulating a transition plan in isolation, we think it is important to keep lines of communication open with advisers and we want to engage in a two-way dialogue to decide how we move forward. More than ever, we need to work together to navigate the new and challenging terrain.

We recognise that advisers play a crucial role in providing access to quality, affordable and independent insurance advice for all Australians, and are vital to our success as a business. We also recognise that when it comes to a long-term approach to the reforms, we believe a partnership approach between insurers and advisers is paramount.

With this in mind, AIA Australia will be engaging directly with advisers via a series of forums across all the major capital cities throughout September and October 2015.

We want to help advisers understand the impact the changes will have on their business and what they will need to do to adapt to the new framework.

The forums are primarily designed to give advisers an opportunity to share their ideas around product design, service delivery, CDM support and business growth. It is this level of detail that will help us to develop the campaigns and initiatives that will form the basis of our response to the Life Insurance Framework.

We recognise that there is more work to do on this, and this is just the beginning.

We have already introduced some initiatives to make adviser businesses as efficient as possible and to streamline administration on our products.

Our new Tele-Application and Client Complete services allow clients to pre-fill sections of their policy application online or over the phone, which should help save time for advisers and possibly improve their efficiency in cutting down the time advisers spend on the application process.

We look forward to working with the advisers – and thank them for their feedback to date – as we address the challenges head on.

Pina Sciarrone is the chief retail insurance officer of AIA Australia