[GRTV] We have to prove we are not the bad guys: Ballantyne

Joining me now is Naomi Ballantyne, the managing director of Partners Life. Welcome, Naomi. It's nice to have you back in the studio again.

Thank you.

We had Adrian Orr in here this morning, and he said one of the bigger issues with life insurance is the asymmetrical information between the customer and the advisor and the company. How do we fix that?

I agree absolutely that that is an issue. It's a fundamental issue that New Zealanders are financially illiterate in respect of things like insurance. So we have an advisory force, which exists effectively to try and provide some education to lift the knowledge in order to be able to give advice. But that, by default, will always mean there's this asymmetrical side of things. And one of the things I had suggested to, in fact, ministers in the previous government before is a thing that the government can do which won't cost them anything and sits outside of the typical, "Why don't you give tax breaks for people to buy insurance?" and things like that, is actually make it mandatory for employers to provide education to their employees about what insurance products are designed to do and the education piece that advisors currently do. And in a similar way, when KiwiSaver started, employers were required to provide access and knowledge for that piece of it.