Insurance products will remain, says NAB

NAB announced yesterday that it agreed to sell 80 per cent of its insurance business – with 20 per cent to be retained by NAB – to the Japanese insurer for $2.4 billion and will be entering into a 20-year distribution partnership.

Despite the sale, NAB general manager of wealth advice Greg Miller told Risk Adviser that there will be no changes to insurance products.

“The current products set that we have for our clients will continue,” Mr Miller said.

“That is a really key point for us in this partnership and is a really key point of Nippon coming into the partnership; what they want to see is that we have the products and large number of customers and want to see that continue.

“Together through the partnership we will want to explore what are the additional new products for customers that we can bring to market. But the existing products will stay in place and [we will] continue the operation of those products for the duration of our current customer set,” he said.

Mr Miller also said that the despite the sale of the business, it will be “business as usual” for the bank’s advice network.

“We are the same products, the same set of operations and processes that they need to use, the same set of adviser tools and the same relationship managers. There will be no changes for advisers; it will be a continuation of their current circumstances,” he said.

Accompanied with the announcement that the bank sold 80 per cent of its life insurance business was the announcement that NAB will be injecting $300 million into its wealth management business.