Partners Life to become a group player

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Partners Life is looking to enter the group life market with an offering that will allow advisers to refer business to the life company or do it themselves.

Wednesday, September 11th 2013, 4:44PM 2 Comments

Jon Lloyd told the Newpark Professional Development day in Auckland that there is huge opportunity in this market.

In the United Kingdom 75% of al life risk was through group sales and the number was about 40% in Australia.

He said only 7% of life business in New Zealand came through group sales.

Some of the issues with group business in New Zealand were a big gap in policy wording between group and retail business and a lack of understanding of group business by underwriters.

Other issues include a lack of product innovation and poor administration, particularly at renewal time.

While Lloyd gave a way little about what the Partners product will look like he did say that advisers can do it themselves or they could refer business to the company which would do all the work and pay a referral fee.

He also said there would be a standard and deluxe products. The deluxe product range would have all the features of retail products while standard would be a stripped down version.

Medical insurance won’t be included to start with but is likely to be added in the second quarter next year. Lloyd says the issue here was the need to develop an “affordable and sustainable” product.

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