by Jenny Ruth
“We believe that sharing our turnaround times will enable us to be transparent, accountable and dedicated to continuously improving our service to you, our advisers. At the beginning of each month, we will post turnaround times for the previous month,” Fidelity says on the web page dedicated to providing this data.
The first month's data showed that in October it took a day to lodge an electronic application for new business and 1.5 days to lodge a paper-based application, medical requests took 5.7 days from request to receipt and it took 1.2 days from request to issuing an in-force policy.
Increases on existing policies were taking 2.5 days and average call wait times for new business calls were answered in 22 seconds.
Live chat provided answers within 30 seconds on both new business and underwriting questions.
In September, the life insurance company admitted that it had dropped the ball, and acknowledged adviser complaints about Fidelity’s products being uncompetitive, its poor service levels and its lack of digital tools.
The company's chief sales and service officer, Bronwyn Kirwan, says Fidelity has made “a clear commitment” to advisers.
“We've already taken signiciant steps to fulfil this promise and delivered on several initiatives such as live chat, our dedicated adviser service team and signature forms, streamlining processes and enhancing service accessibility,” Kirwan says.
“Publishing our turnaround times shows accountability by being transparent and gives advisers and customers more clarity around our processing times,” she says.
The website shows the wait time for those calling the call centre was 21 seconds in October and only 1% of calls were abandoned.
Email responses took 2.5 days on average on questions including general policy information, address changes, payment detail changes and copies of renewal letters.
Kiwan says Fidelity is proud of some of these numbers, particularly that calls were being answered within just over 20 seconds on average, but that the company recognises other areas need improvement.
“That's why we're sharing our comprehensive service metrics and will be providing monthly updates so we can hold ourselves to account and look for opportunities to continuously improve.”
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