Insurance innovator and market entrant iExtend has appointed Katherine Saivanidis as Head of Marketing to spearhead and coordinate brand awareness and educate advisers and insurers about the unique offer.
Effective immediately, Katherine brings more than a decade’s experience in specialist insurance marketing to iExtend, most recently from Zurich, where she set up the Customer Stream of Marketing, aligning the activity of both the Zurich and OnePath brands.
Prior to this, Katherine spent six years at ANZ as Marketing Leader, Retail insurance. She has also spent more than three years at TAL Australia, where she filled a number of roles across Marketing, Digital, Corporate Communications and Brand.
Katherine’s appointment caps off a busy four months for iExtend, which was launched in March to effectively extend the life of a life insurance policy by partnering with life insurance owners to take co-ownership of the life policy, paying ongoing premiums on the cover which the policyholder has determined to cancel or reduce.
Co-owning a life policy with iExtend means that policyholders retain a partial interest in the original policy and eliminate future premium payments on the co-owned agreement portion of the policy to be cancelled.
iExtend CEO David Sarkis said iExtend has been received well by the industry, who reflect on the perennial industry challenges such as premium increases, client retention and longevity.
“iExtend wants to lead through innovation and to provide policyholders, advisers and insurers with a valuable solution that benefits them all. Katherine’s appointment reflects our commitment to deliver to market a new and timely offer that may create a positive outcome.”
“The purpose and vision for iExtend is to help Australians who have determined to cancel or reduce their Life insurance retain an interest on the co-owned portion at no cost. Our approach is to do this in collaboration – with the policyholder, who bought the policy all those years ago as an act of prudence and kindness; with the adviser, who helped them navigate the tough choices, always looking out for their best interests and in collaboration with the insurer, who agreed always to be there – no matter what happens,” said Sarkis.