Partners kills its matrix

As one of the advisers getting a pay cut and finding that doing the right thing for customers was actually helping pay the bills for a change, I must take a cynical line with this.

So, the COM score that targeted the specific behaviours of advisers to match the intent of the new rules was difficult for advisers to understand and removing it would give the majority of advisers a pay increase.

Ahuh, want to have another run at that?

Difficult to understand and disclose on: Yeah, no. Login to My Partners Life and under the reporting tab there is a page with a clear statement of what is being paid by agency. If this is too hard for advisers, you need to find smarter advisers!

Second point; the new approach will give the majority of advisers a pay rise. Ahh, so the majority of advisers are not doing the basics to the level of maintaining the new underpinned commission; again, you need to find better advisers!

While you can't determine if a single adviser not achieving the COM score needed is doing anything wrong as there are reasons for this, the majority not achieving it suggests that the approach is showing up that advisers still have a lot of work to do concerning customer outcome measurements.

Might I suggest an alternative headline: Advisers not achieving COM scores have seen commission rates drop and are choosing other providers as a result.

I'm not as green as I am cabbage looking ;)

JP, yes, all your points are valid, but my own experience of the COM was the inability of clients to bother responding. A low COM score arises when there is a low response from clients.

@Majella that may be the case, as I said there are factors at the individual level that mean it may not work work.

Though my own client responses were poor to appalling too, it was more the other factors that have helped me. It is a case of being consistent across the board that saw scores tick up consistently over time.

COM has no relationship to CoFI, never did. It was self indulgent and a tiny overstep. Great way to finally weed out possible poor quality, obviously poor quality advisers.

JP getting rid of COM alone is hardly compelling reasons to deal with Partners. Their service is extremely poor and if we had to COM them then they would fail.

I heard one of their BDM's still saying they do not have legacy systems, my word... really! Clearly no idea about technology and the speed of change. Partners continue to use meaningless product features as a magic trick to keep the ignorant writing. They will be very challenged next year and when many come out from under the spell.

Insurance companies should stick to their lane. They are not advisers and even those that employ advisers should not be crossing into independent adviser territory.

Partners Life has decided to stop using its COM for advisers as it believes the system may breach the CoFI regulations which are due to come into effect next year. Partners chief distribution officer Andries van Graan told advisers at the first of the company's Spring into Summer roadshows in Hamilton that advisers would now all be paid 100% of bonus commission.

So let me get this right. A great provider introduced initiative that was designed to encourage positive adviser conduct creating good customer outcomes has now been deemed a potential breach of the upcoming CoFI regulations? How can the same provider paying now every adviser 100% of bonus commission sit there with a straight face and not consider the latter more likely a potential breach of CoFI??? Wasn't that the whole reason for COM's introduction in the first place?

I agree with JP. This change by Partners Life can only be viewed one way sorry. Some advisers not achieving COM scores have seen commission rates drop and are choosing other providers as a result.

@Backstage, thanks. I agree there is no relationship to CoFI, though, from a service perspective, I have two other providers that are way worse on the service piece.

There are various reasons that advisers choose providers, and for some, COM and the resulting commission rates will have an impact, which shouldn't happen, but it will be going on. It is a long bow to call that a CoFI issue rather than an adviser issue.

Thanks Amused, spot on. The challenge of principals in the face of commercial reality and the rest of the industry not following with a principals basis. It's not the first time Partners have tried to lead something, and the rest haven't followed.

@Tash, most of us have that view. However, CoFI is where that oversight comes from, and I expect that, with time, we will see more of this BS from providers in the name of CoFI. This is where advisers' upskilling on the legislative framework (CS9) needs to happen to ensure we have a consistent voice on pushing back on operational oversteps.

Programs like COM that lead behaviour rather than apply the big stick are more business-friendly and keep providers in their lane without adding burden on advice businesses. Advice businesses can choose to adapt or not, resulting in a market at work result with little in the way of additional overhead admin.

It results in those providers that take that approach generally having a better client experience, and the other providers, once seeing an increased impact from industry metrics, implementing similar approaches, and the industry overall improves its approach. This is how change in a market is delivered effectively without heavy-handed regulation, which we would all prefer to avoid.

It takes time and determination, and we saw this in action with the significant improvement in risk advisers' advice processes from 2010 through 2021 under the regulation that basically was silent other than registration and disclosure requirements. What advice looked like in 2010 is very different to what it looked like in 2021, and that was all industry lead, not regulators.

It's not that we can't adapt; we have proven that we can; it's about leading the desired behaviour aligned with legislation and regulation with the appropriate incentives. Partners Life has abdicated that leadership position on driving this positive change to revert back to the pack, which isn't good for any of us in the long term.

All of the insurers that have had leadership positions that have backtracked or abdicated these positions have not regained them, with others picking up the baton and forging ahead.