Asteron drums in changes for life industry

Asteron’s newly appointed New Zealand managing director Sean Carroll has rolled out a raft of other changes for the life company including new commission structures.

Friday, August 20th 2004, 6:23AM
Those changes include Asteron’s SmartPlan being dropped from October for five new stand alone products, new commission structures for brokers, a move to new single computer platform for the company, a new software package for quotations and, according to Asteron’s senior management, a new attitude to service.

From English born actuary Sean Carroll down, Asteron management fessed up to advisers at a roadshow in Auckland yesterday that since Royal & SunAlliance was top dog about six years ago, the company has lost market share. And brokers have told them in the past year that their service had been poor.

The new computer platform is to replace the seven present systems that Asteron agreed has made everyone’s life a misery. And the new software package, Galaxy, is said to make doing comprehensive client quotes easy and efficient.

Jeremy Lawrey, manager of risk products, told brokers the one package fits all multi-policy SmartPlan hasn’t kept up with the market’s needs, nor was its rates competitive Lawrey says Asteron aims to hold top three market share in all of the product classes.

Carroll is importing an Aussie colleague, David Wright, as manager operations and risk, to crank up the service culture to ensure that side of the business helps achieve it.

He says Asteron wants to be “easy to do business with” and it will have the sustainable products, integrity and ethics to back that.

National sales manager Mark Frecklington said Asteron’s new commission structure had be calculated by independent researchers to be number two in the sector and only a few dollars short of the top rewarder.

Brokers will get a choice of three ways to get paid:

Commissions will be calculated on base annual premium and brokers can discount a client’s premium by selecting a reduced commission rate.

A series of comparisons between the old and new showed the commission rate had dropped in some areas and increased in others.

New commissions did not apply to disability products. There was a different rate there which Frecklington admitted research showed would mean Asteron was not one of the top rewarders, but it would still be competitive.

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