Speaking at a recent nationwide series of roadshows general manager intermediaries, Jeff Page, told advisers that the company acknowledged its problems.
He says the relaunch of its life insurance range has been put back three times until the company was sure its service problems had been resolved.
Tower Health and Life has a new management team (details in the People Page), it is focused on a service and support culture and it has a refreshed product range, he says.
“There is no denying our past service failures,” he said. “We are 110% focused on delivering (the) goods.”
National broker manager Barry Read says problems included a 26% call abandonment rate, but with changes that number is down to 5%. There have also been issues around advisers not knowing who to deal with and a high staff turnover that meant there was limited knowledge within the organisation.
Tower has put extra resources into training and it is confident that these measures are paying dividends, he says.
Changes have been made to Life/Business 360 products that were launched in October last year. These changes include changes to premiums, wording and being clearer about what is the target market for these life products. Read says Life 360 is aimed at families in the 30 to 50 age group range.
Currently 68% of its customers are in this range. Business 360 is aimed at small businesses. Premium changes include a minimum premium of $20 a month, and reductions for life, trauma and permanent disability cover. However there have been premium increases for older lives in the permanent disability area.
Amongst the wording changes are removal of misuse of drugs and alcohol exclusion from all covers, and removal of surgery requirements for cancer.
Tower have also changed its advanced payment for recoverable strokes.
In addition to these and other changes Tower has added an income protection policy for farmers that recognises their unique income flow.
As a consequence of these changes Life 360 enjoys much higher ratings in the Plantech research package.
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