Chris Powell
New life insurance company, Integrity Life (Integrity), has launched to the retail market. The launch follows Integrity’s successful pilot program, involving a pool of over 50 specialist risk-advisers, who helped co-create their new customer-focused life insurance proposition. The new proposition, which couples simplified value-for-money products with next generation technology, addresses the evolving retail life insurance needs of Australians in the post-Royal Commission era.
Over the last nine months Integrity has worked with its adviser partners to develop tailored insurance solutions focusing on innovation through new technology and better customer experience for both advisers and their clients. The new technology frees advisers from the legacy constraints found elsewhere in the market, offers robust medical definitions, a personalised claims process and a life insurance experience that is respectful, transparent and fair.
Integrity Life MD, Chris Powell, commented, “Integrity means doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. We have set ourselves a high benchmark with our name, and we are committed to exceeding it. We will work with financial advisers to empower them to provide all Australians retail life insurance that delivers the best possible protection, straightforward medical definitions, and is free from the systemic problems that exist within legacy providers.”
The co-creation pilot was the first of its kind in the industry. It saw Integrity’s team working closely with advisers to understand then address their top frustrations when working with life insurers. Integrity today shared some of the key challenges, which included a lack of transparency on product and price, opaqueness around product features, ancillary benefits and calculation of premiums, duplication of information in the application process, inefficiencies in navigating application forms and wasted time whenever the adviser needed to make changes to the application.
In response to these issues, the new Integrity products have a clear modular design, new systems allow advisers to quote with upfront certainty of price and outcome by using an integrated quote and pre-assessment tool on a platform that gives advisers access to client details anytime, anywhere and on any device, 24/7. Just like other typical successful on-line businesses, the Integrity shopping cart shows both advisers and their clients the premium breakdown of optional add-ons, loadings, exclusions, discounts and monthly or yearly premiums. The platform also allows integration of information and highly customised communications driven by advisers choosing their preference.
Chris continued, “We worked through a list of top adviser pain points to build Integrity from the ground up. We heard from advisers that they want simplified processes and products, responsiveness, and value-for-money pricing. For example, using our integrated quote and pre-assessment tool allows advisers to immediately see if a clients’ health conditions or pastimes result in a loading or exclusion and how these may impact their premiums. Our interface is clean and easy to navigate and designed to be intuitive, requiring advisers to only ever input client information once and in any order. We are delivering on these adviser requests to make selecting life insurance more straightforward and transparent for the adviser and, ultimately, their clients.”
Integrity has its headquarters in Pyrmont and already employs more than 70 people across customer care, underwriting, claims, product development, distribution, IT, customer experience, finance marketing. “This means we are a full service, full capability life insurer” Chris said.
The launch to the retail market follows the successful roll-out in 2018 to the Group market after Integrity Group Holdings Ltd acquired QBE Life, with lead investors Leadenhall Capital Partners and Daido Life.
Chris concluded, “Our industry has suffered setbacks and we want advisers and their clients to start to believe in life insurance again. The Banking Royal Commission has clearly set out the 6 behavioural norms that it wants built in the culture of every participant in Financial Services in Australia. In this regard, Integrity is a good news story as we are the type of values and principles based organization that the Royal Commission is wanting to see. This really is a new era and Integrity will help advisers and their clients to feel confident that their life insurance will deliver when they need it most.”
