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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The team now has 16 additional members based in Sydney and Brisbane, including the Health Connect Tele-underwriting team, and boasts enhanced underwriting capabilities and availability to service advisers and policyholders.

The team now has 16 additional members based in Sydney and Brisbane, including the Health Connect Tele-underwriting team, and boasts enhanced underwriting capabilities and availability to service advisers and policyholders.

“We have acquired great underwriting, tele-underwriting and claims expertise and now have a number of key roles working across both claims and underwriting,” said Tina Beilby, Zurich Life and Investments’ Chief Underwriting Officer.

“With our wider product suite including Zurich Active, Sumo and FutureWise, we’re ensuring our service adds value by leveraging a more diverse underwriting approach and gaining access to additional key reinsurers.”

Matthew Apps, National Underwriting Manager, Distribution, continues reporting to Ms Beilby, and will work closely with Sales & Distribution to deliver a seamless Underwriting-BDM service for advisers. New joiner Mary Sinclair-Porter, National Underwriting Operations Manager, also reports to Ms Beilby and has recently appointed three Underwriting Managers across NSW, QLD and VIC/WA/SA, to further enhance operational excellence.

Tony Baker, Financial Underwriting & Claims Manager and Dr Matthew Paul, Chief Medical Officer, have also joined from Macquarie Life, bringing technical skills across both claims and underwriting. Both work closely with Zurich’s Reinsurance Partners and the newly developed Underwriting Centre of Technical Excellence team.

“We’re delighted to add such high calibre talent to build on the strength of Zurich’s existing underwriting team. We’re enormously proud that Zurich was named Underwriting and New Business Team of the year by the AFA early in 2016, following Macquarie Life receiving this award in previous years,” Ms Beilby added.

“Our newly combined team will be instrumental in supporting Zurich’s expanded product and service proposition in the market and provide a smart, efficient underwriting service for advisers and policyholders.”

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Tina Beilby

Time is valuable and in today’s rapidly changing advice landscape, it’s becoming more important than ever to boost efficiency and focus on your core value proposition – providing quality advice to your clients.

In this article, Zurich’s Chief Underwriting Officer, Tina Beilby shares her insights on the importance of collaboration between underwriters and advisers, and the role that tele-underwriting plays in helping achieve the best (and fastest) outcomes for clients.

Let’s get the most important questions out of the way first Tina, what footy team do you follow?

I’m a rare type in that I am originally from Adelaide but I don’t really follow footy! But I do enjoy the atmosphere of live games. My husband, stepsons and even our cat are avid supporters and members of Port Power and West Tigers so I support these teams vicariously through their passion.

When and where did you get your start in the insurance industry?

I started at National Mutual as a New Business Clerk straight out of school. I can still recall my first phone call from an adviser asking me to fax something urgently – I had no idea what a fax was but promised I would get it to them anyway. Thankfully it was something easy!   My time in the industry before underwriting included manual calculations, corporate superannuation and sales support.

So how long have you worked as an underwriter?

I’ve been underwriting overall now for 16 years.

What are some of biggest changes in underwriting you’ve seen in your time in the industry, and what was your reaction to those changes?

Probably three key stand-outs for me are communication and accessibility to an underwriter, pace of change and technology.

An underwriter, in some respects, used to be the back office gatekeeper. You were rarely ever being questioned on decisions and God forbid you ever did! These days, an underwriter is viewed as an integral part of the sales process, helping advisers take their client through the underwriting journey. We see it as our responsibility to educate advisers and help them understand why loadings or exclusions need to apply or why a risk may be too great to insure.

The pace of change is phenomenal! Life underwriting is based on historical data to support our decisions but with the constant improvements in medical technology and comprehensive product enhancements, we are constantly being challenged to keep pace with these developments, which can result in some very complex underwriting solutions.

Technology has helped, particularly in improving efficiencies, providing consistency and collecting data, all of which is crucial in helping us gain insights into our client profile and more accurately measure the experience of our book of business. However, it can never replace the expertise of a human underwriter when risk profiling a complex scenario.

What does future of underwriting look like?

I think technology is going to play a very important part in delivering the speed that clients expect, the ease in the application and underwriting process, and bespoke pricing based on individual needs and circumstances (as opposed to the pooling of risk method we’ve used for many years). I also think we will need to harness the expertise and skills of our underwriters who are the brains behind the URE (underwriting rules engine). Whilst technology will play an important role in our future it’s only as good as the experts who work on these tools.

Outside of technology, we understand that our clients are human beings, so the adviser-underwriter relationship will continue to play an important role in our future business partnerships. After all, people do business with other people and this is why we pride ourselves on our one-to-one adviser case care model.

With efficiency such a big focus, do you think the underwriting process can become more efficient?

I think it has to. There are many articles out there today purporting that “speed is the new business currency” and if we don’t jump on board, we’ll be quickly left behind. At Zurich, we have some of the fastest turnaround times in the industry, from same day service up to 48 hours as the longest turnaround time for the majority of our new business. That’s because we understand that underwriting doesn’t just stop with the underwriter. It involves several operational teams working seamlessly together, including administration and tele-underwriting, to provide the most efficient end-to-end service.

A lot of advisers are saying they plan to make more use of tele underwriting in 2016, what are the advantages?

Tele-underwriting takes the lengthy and sometimes sensitive task off the adviser’s hands by using professional tele-interviewers to complete the application over the phone. Tele-underwriting is also used to obtain ad hoc information during the underwriting process like a specific questionnaire or to obtain more information on disclosure provided in a medical report, which the adviser may not be privy to. It also makes life a lot easier for time-poor clients in that they can choose the most suitable time to complete the tele-interview for them. This can be any time from early in the morning to later in the evening, and often in the comfort of their own home.

At Zurich, we found the completion time for tele-underwritten cases was days compared to weeks using traditional methods. Aside from the efficiency gain, tele-underwriting also instils trust in the client that the adviser and insurer are working together to provide them with best outcome.

Do you think field of underwriting will make a come back?

I don’t think it ever went out of vogue! Instead I think it has evolved into a combined BDM-underwriting service proposition. Zurich’s underwriters visit advisers regularly, attend functions like MDRT and AFA roadshows and present on underwriting topics at PD days and conferences.

Education and partnering together is an integral part of Zurich’s ‘Blueprints for the Future’ package, which has just been launched to support advisers, and we believe underwriting plays an important role in its success.

What are 3 ways advisers can get better and faster underwriting outcomes?

1. We receive a lot of pre-assessments which helps the adviser position any modifications upfront rather than at the end of the process. I would encourage all advisers to ‘field underwrite’ by obtaining as much information as possible upfront and engaging the underwriter early in the piece to work through the best solutions for your clients.
2. Submitting business via e-application ensures there are no omissions and the URE (underwriting rules engine) is already working in the background to the point you may even receive an instant assessment which you can share with your client on the spot.
3. Utilise tele-underwriting for comprehensive disclosure, flexibility for your client and quicker end-to-end turnaround times.

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