Leading life insurer AIA Australia has announced a new partnership with HUB24 which will now include AIA Australia’s multi-award winning Priority Protection product among its product suite.
The HUB24 platform is used by a growing number of financial advisers to access, manage and purchase clients’ investments and risk policies online.
The partnership with HUB24 is the third platform linkup AIA Australia has established in the past two years, as the insurer continues to develop products and services for this growing segment. Advisers looking to reduce their administrative loads, and facing the added responsibility of regulatory compliance have been a catalyst for growth in the platform market, with a third of risk business being written through platforms.[1]
General Manager of Life Insurance, Damien Mu, said building the company’s platform partnerships was a priority for AIA Australia in its drive to support advisers by reducing their administrative load and giving them more client-facing time.
“Platforms are a rapidly growing business channel for advisers because of their functionality,” Mr. Mu said. “As a dedicated partnering specialist, it’s important AIA Australia continues to innovate in this area and make it as easy as possible for our adviser partners to manage their clients’ policies.”
Acting CEO Jason Entwistle from HUB24 said the addition of AIA Australia to the platform’s product list had been driven by feedback from advisers looking for greater choice of products.
“Writing retail insurance via a platform makes a lot of sense for advisers and it’s important that platform operators offer advisers sufficient choice to enable them to select the most appropriate solution for each client,” said Mr. Entwistle.
Mr. Mu said the focus would continue to be on building strong partnerships to assist advisers and strengthen new distribution channels in the months ahead.
“AIA Australia is continually finding new ways to improve its partnership model with platform providers like HUB24, and we expect this to be a strong development area for us over the year. We’re currently in talks with a number of platform providers who are looking to differentiate their offer with multiple insurance partners and, in such a growing segment, this is a great way to offer further business support for financial advisers,” Mr. Mu concluded.
[1] Source: Coredata 2011 Risk Survey