Tina Beilby

Zurich Life & Investments has announced several key appointments in its operational team, to support both the Zurich and OnePath life insurance brands and provide a consistently high-quality experience for financial advisers and customers.

The appointments include:

• Tina Beilby to the newly created role of Head of Operations, Integration
• Joanne Faglioni to the newly created role of Chief Claims Officer.  The Claims portfolio includes both retail and group claims across Zurich and OnePath Life.
• Sheriff Hamza is appointed to the role of Head of Retail Claims, whilst Jennifer Faglioni is appointed Head of Group Claims.
• Peter Tilocca as Chief Underwriting Officer.

These changes will formally bring the Zurich and OnePath underwriting and claims teams together under the functional leadership of Peter and Joanne respectively, creating one of the largest groups of specialised life underwriters and claims personnel in Australia.

The Head of Operations, Integration, under Tina’s leadership, will be responsible for key initiatives to support our claims, underwriting and service leaders to drive a more integrated, flexible and best-practice service , and to support our people on this journey.

Peter, as Chief Underwriting Officer, will ensure that the underwriting approaches across the Zurich and OnePath retail portfolio remain distinctly different, so true product choice is available to Australian customers across Zurich’s Wealth Protection, Active and Sumo range, and OnePath’s OneCare retail proposition.

Gavin Pearce, Zurich and OnePath’s Chief Operations Officer, said, “These appointments are a next step in our journey of integrating our Zurich and OnePath operational teams, so they may share best practice and work more effectively within their combined functions. The structure has been designed to support excellent customer and adviser service outcomes both now and into the future.

“Our operations leadership team is one of the strongest and most respected in the industry, and we are delighted to retain the prowess of individuals from both the OnePath and Zurich businesses.  These appointments reflect the career aspirations of our team members, which is one of our ambitions as an employer-of-choice.”

Financial advisers are encouraged to keep working with their nominated BDM and underwriting contacts at Zurich and OnePath.

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Peter Tilocca

OnePath continues to invest in its inhouse underwriting engine to ensure its efficient and easy-to-use for advisers and their clients.

Since its launch in November, more than 70 enhancements have been made to the underwriting engine, based on internal and external feedback.

Further, almost 1,000 unique conditions (including aliases) have been selected from the catalogue, 900 of which are medical. Image testing, vertebral disc-related issues and muscular back pain the top three most selected medical conditions.

A further 52 unique travel destinations and 41 unique pastimes were searched for using the engine, with the US, Indonesia and the UK the top three travel destination searches and skiing, dirt biking and diving the most common pastime searches.

According to OnePath’s Chief Underwriter Peter Tilocca, the volume of enhancements reflects OnePath’s commitment to its usability and ongoing development as a leading-edge underwriting engine.

“Two years ago, OnePath made the decision to develop its underwriting engine inhouse so it could ensure the dynamism of the engine and its adaptability to the needs of both advisers and customers. By partnering with the University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) Advanced Analytics Institute, we can bring together the best of AI with our rich history in insurance.”

The enhancements have been well received by advisers who in April awarded the engine a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of +65. NPS has a scale from -100 to+100 with anything over +50 regarded as ‘Excellent’.

An increasing number of advisers are now using the underwriting engine, making the most of its usability and its customers benefits.

“Close to 2,000 advisers have now used the risk engine to research conditions. With every enhancement we make there is an educational period that follows, so we expect this number to grow considerably over the next six months.”

Over the next quarter, OnePath will continue to respond to adviser feedback on the engine, prioritising enhancements and inclusions based on this and claimant request.

“Ongoing monitoring of feedback and the updating of the medical catalogue and aliases are crucial elements of maintaining a leading-edge underwriting engine,” said Tilocca. “Our ability to monitor this feedback and respond to requests is only enhanced by our decision to develop this capability inhouse.”

Last month, OnePath and UTS won three Merit Awards in the NSW State iAwards in the AI Data Driven Underwriting Solution category – Data Insights Innovation of the Year, Business Service Markets and Research and Development Project of the Year – progressing to the National iAward final.

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Peter Tilocca

ANZ has announced its OnePath life insurance underwriting engine received an ‘Excellent’ rating in an independent adviser survey, with advisers ranking their experience a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of +53.

NPS has a scale from -100 to+100 with anything over +50 regarded as ‘Excellent’.

Commenting on the results, ANZ Wealth Chief Underwriter Peter Tilocca said: “These results show OnePath is delivering on its promise to provide advisers and their clients with an efficient, easy to use underwriting engine.

“We’re very pleased advisers are reaping the rewards from our investment in underwriting innovation, allowing them to spend more time with their clients and building strong, sustainable advice businesses.”

Overall, advisers rated their experience 8.1 out of 10, with 65 per cent of advisers rating it 9 or 10. 18 per cent ranked it 10 out of 10.

Adviser’s feedback demonstrated high satisfaction with the new underwriting engine, with ‘speed of application’ and ‘ease of use’ the highest ranked categories.

• Advisers ranked the following:Easy for me to complete – 8.4 out of 10
• The time it takes to complete the application process – 8.1 out of 10
• It was clear what information was required – 8.1 out of 10
• Experience over the past two weeks – 8.1 out of 10
• The amount of information required – 7.9 out of 10

Verbatim feedback from advisers included:

• “The application is user-friendly and easy for clients to understand.”
• “Straight-forward, easy process, can complete offline.”
• “I find compared to other providers that OnePath is the smoothest application process to complete.”
• “The application is great as is and does not overwhelm the client with too many unnecessary questions.”

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Peter Tilocca

ANZ OnePath has rebuilt its underwriting system to launch a simpler, more intuitive experience for customers applying for OneCare insurance.

Developed in partnership with the University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) Advanced
Analytics Institute, OnePath’s new underwriting system has taken ten years of OnePath data and used Artificial Intelligence (AI), data science and data analytics to bring the future to underwriting.

The result is a more streamlined personal statement that takes less time to complete
provides customers with more certainty and brings a new era of plain speaking to insurance.

Users can now disclose medical information in a manner that is more aligned to the way
they think about their health, raising relevant questions along the way.

Key features of the new underwriting system:

• Up to 30% faster completion time of personal statements
• Higher straight-through processing and acceptance rates, adding momentum to the 52.9% acceptance rate for clients under age-50 on all lump sum benefits
• An expected 2,300 per annum reduction in the underwriting referral triggers
• The addition of 3,000 medical conditions, reducing the need to enter free-from text in the ‘any other’ category which added delay and uncertainty to the process.
• 1,000 medical aliases such as ‘tennis elbow’ to describe medical conditions more aligned to everyday language.
• Improved tele-interviewing and client URL experiences
• Ability to search for conditions and to jump to different areas of the personal statement to easily adapt with client’s conversation.

ANZ’s Chief of Underwriting Peter Tilocca, said: “ANZ OnePath has taken underwriting innovation in a new direction, taking its own data and harnessing new tools such as AI and data analytics to make insurance a more intuitive and engaging experience.”

UTS Advanced Analytics Institute Professor, Dr Guandong Xu confirmed the power and value of using AI to transform underwriting.

“Using AI to simulate people’s decision making process, we have shown how AI has used big data, natural language processing and predictive modelling, to revolutionise a huge process such as underwriting.”

In September, the underwriting system won the Best Industry Application of Data Analytics and the Best Industry Application of Artificial Intelligence at the Data and AI Innovation Awards held in Sydney.

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ANZ addresses “cumbersome” underwriting process for tradies.

ANZ has built a predictive underwriting capability to make the insurance underwriting process faster, accurate and easier for tradespeople.

Based on a successful pilot program in Victoria, licensed tradespeople such as plumbers, carpenters, electricians and builders aged between 20 and 40 years of age can now access an underwriting program that uses big data and artificial intelligence to identify factors common to this group.

Working with the University of Technology, Sydney Advanced Analytics Institute, data from 10 years of OneCare underwriting and claims decisions were analysed to achieve the accurate three-dimensional market segment profile.

According to ANZ Wealth chief underwriter Peter Tilocca, this is tremendous step forward for the insurance industry which has been locked into the same underwriting process for the past two decades.

“The underwriting process today is at best described as cumbersome, and in a world where the consumer now expects instant gratification, an underwriting time frame average of 20 to 30 days will no longer be acceptable.”

“By working backwards from the claims history and seeking out commonalities in this data set, we have been able to reduce underwriting personal statements while maintaining the integrity of our insurance portfolio,” Mr Tilocca said.

In practice, this has seen the number of medical questions in the underwriting process for the full OneCare product suite reduced to eight. It is anticipated this will have a positive effect on the completion rate of insurance applications.

“Currently 20 per cent of life insurance applications are not completed due to a requirement for more data or incomplete information provided,” Mr Tilocca said. “This has a detrimental effect not only on Australia’s underinsurance problem, but also on the customer experience and the perception of insurers.”

This breakthrough in predictive underwriting complements the launch of Pre-Assessment Wizard which helps advisers with loadings and exclusions for pre-existing medical conditions in real-time. Bringing these two initiatives together will further streamline the underwriting process.

“We’re excited about the opportunities big data and artificial intelligence are bringing to the underwriting process, giving advisers and their customers a better experience,” Mr Tilocca said. “We will continue to look for other opportunities to transform the underwriting process.”

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Mr Tilocca has been serving as Acting Chief Underwriter following the retirement of John Leonard in March, 2017 and brings more than 25 years of life insurance and underwriting experience to the role.

ANZ Wealth Head of Life Insurance, Gerard Kerr said: “Over the past few months, Peter has provided important strategic guidance for the business’ underwriting philosophy and has been the real driver behind our policy.

“His performance during this time, coupled with his extensive industry experience made him the obvious choice for the role. I’m very pleased we’ve been able to access this expertise from within the organisation.

“Peter and the team will focus on continuing to grow our capability to deliver innovative solutions for our advisers and customers and ensure we are well placed to respond to industry changes,” Mr Kerr said.

Mr Tilocca’s responsibilities include underwriting policy, quality framework, underwriting rules engine performance and associated tools and capabilities.

He joined ANZ Wealth as Group Underwriting and Operations Manager in 2013 and most recently was Senior Manager, Insurance Transformation. Prior to joining ANZ, Peter held a variety of senior roles with The Reinsurance Group of America. He also spent four years working with ING where he was employed as the Chief Underwriter.

Mr Tilocca’s appointment is effective immediately.

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