Year in Review: New bosses; New player; Lots of action
Good Returns editor Philip Macalister looks back on the year in insurance and
Monday, December 30th 2024, 9:33AM
Reflecting back on the year I’d say the health and life insurance industry is pretty robust and competitive, but is facing quite a few challenges. Next year is shaping up to be pretty interesting judging on what we can see at the moment.
Firstly, I’ll start at the top. Always a good place to start. Over the past year and a bit we have seen significant changes in leadership with new chief executives at Fidelity Life and Partners Life, with of course the retirement of industry shaper Naomi Ballantyne. Plus we have the announcement that Gail Costa is stepping down meaning a new boss at Chubb is likely in early 2025.
Interestingly we have gone from an industry largely led by women to one in which the majority of leaders are men.
The new leaders are shaping things their way. Clearly Campbell Mitchell at Fidelity Life has brought new energy and an aggressive approach to the market.
Michael Weston at Partners Life has large shoes to fill and is shaping the company in a new way.
Both Partners and Fidelity laid out their future plans to advisers at roadshows recently.
Arguably the biggest surprise this year was news Resolution Life, which bought the AMP Life a few years back, is in the process of acquiring Asteron Life.
While it has been denied for years that Asteron Life was on the market, market sources have said it has been shopped around and its parent, Australian-based Suncorp, wanted to exit life insurance in New Zealand.
What makes this sale more interesting is just weeks ago Nippon Life announced it was buying all of the Resolution Life business including its operations in Australasia. Nippon has said the Asteron deal is still going to go ahead.
I suspect many advisers will be pleased to see Resolution change as it was not the most popular with advisers grumbling about service levels and other things.
Assuming the deal goes though then the Asian influence in the life insurance space in New Zealand is amplified significantly. Besides Nippon Life, Japanese-based Di-ichi owns Partners Life and AIA essentially reports into Asia.
No wonder then that Fidelity Life is playing its New Zealand-owned card strongly at the moment.
Another surprise story, which got little airtime, was Fidelity Life’s “offer” to Asteron advisers to “switch” providers after it was announced that Resolution Life planned to buy Asteron. Of course this was spiced up by the fact that the bosses of both firms recently worked together.
The sector is in fine shape if you consider the competitive dynamics, particularly as the year moved on.
Fidelity, under its new leadership, is living up to its promise to get back in the game with advisers. Even though a year ago it said it wasn’t interested in new business, it is now using aggressive new business tactics to win business.
There's lots of affordability plays in the market with three-month free premium offerings, and other offers.
A lot of customers are getting reviews, and looking to save money, and that's creating some interesting dynamics.
Next year will be even more interesting as a new player is set to enter the market probably in the second quarter of the year.
The company, which will only operate in the professional market, has already made a bunch of good appointments and is, we understand, about to bring on two business development managers.
Arguably the big challenge, especially around health insurance, is rising premiums. We understand there are some big ones coming down the pipeline (which will make council rate rises pale into insignificance).
Another of the positives has been the growth and renaissance of MDRT. I may be a little biased here as I am a supporter of MDRT but that also means I have seen how the organisation has developed over the past couple of years.
MDRT has introduced a number of new initiatives this year to help its members and to foster a community of high performing professional advisers.
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