GRTV: Welcome to Good Returns TV. I'm Philip Macalister. Now, joining me in the studio is Jonathan Beale, the chief distribution officer at AIA. Now, welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Nice to be here.

GRTV: Now, we go back a long way. When I first met you, you were at ASB on the investment side.

Jonathan: That's right.

GRTV: And then you went to Tower for general insurance, and now you're with life insurance.

Jonathan: Yeah.

GRTV: What's it like? It must be quite different.

Jonathan: It's fabulous, actually. I actually started in the life insurance industry a long time ago, back in the UK, so it's almost like a full circle. I started with a company called Legal & General back in-

GRTV: Oh, right

Jonathan: ... Cardiff, in the UK. So it's wonderful to be back in a, probably, I think, the best industry in the world. It's fantastic.

GRTV: And I imagine that's changed massively since you were with-

Jonathan: Oh, my. Oh my goodness. We were just saying the other day that when I was an adviser, it was much simpler than it is today. The products were much simpler. I think we used to have a critical illness policy that would cover you for six illnesses. Now, it's about 35, 36. It's got way more complicated. And being an adviser today is very different. The products are more complicated. There's way more compliance and regulation, and customer demands. Yeah, so it's very different. Very different.

GRTV: Yeah. And so six months into your chief distribution officer role at AIA, so what are some of your biggest takeouts of what you're seeing coming- Yeah... into the industry from-

Jonathan: The big thing that hasn't changed is this industry is all about relationships, and working with the advisers, and understanding what's working well for them, what's not, and then how do we help and support them. It's a very challenging environment for advisers, and so the cost of living crisis has been cutting quite deep. So I think advisers have been spending a lot more time with existing customers and help them through some of the cost challenges and how they're dealing with that.

GRTV: So what are some of the things, or resources and tools which AIA has to help advisers when it comes to this cost of living crisis?

Jonathan: Yeah. Probably that's been our focus, I think, over the last six months on how we support advisers around that. We've launched some new products to help with that, so things like severe trauma, that's sort of more a cost-effective way of covering people with critical illnesses. We've sort of changed our excesses on some policies to help manage that. Vitality is a core part of what we do at AIA, so we've recently launched the healthy food benefit, which we can probably talk a little bit about.

GRTV: We have to talk about that, yeah.

Jonathan: Which is, again, helping with the cost of living. And just helping through the support of how to interact with the customer, and how to have a conversation about the cover and why is it important. These are big decisions that customers and advisers have to make, so we have to give them as much support as we possibly can.

GRTV: And just on that thing, what do you think is the biggest support that AIA can give an adviser right now?

Jonathan: There's probably two, I'd say. One is around the price of insurance, or as we like to call it, the value of insurance. So it's not just around how much am I paying every fortnight and every month. So making sure that our pricing and our value of our products are supportive of a very competitive market. So we've done a lot of work around our pricing and how we do that. But also, advisers are busy people, and so dealing with AIA, we need to make it easy and simple, and we've done a lot of work to make that better. We're not finished, by any stretch of the imagination, but we need to be easy to do business with, new business and existing business.

GRTV: So are there any examples of things you're doing in that space which advisers might not know about?

Jonathan: Yeah. We've been doing a lot around our support model for advisers, so we've been putting resource and people to help support some of our larger strategic accounts.

GRTV: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan: We've done some work around the AIA hub on making that easier to access and use. We've been doing a piece of work around existing business in particular. That's been a bit of a pain point for a while. So being able to quote on certain products, so the advisers can do that. And just sort of streamlining some of our processes in the back end, and AI's been helping us do that. And so we can actually get things done quicker and smarter for our advisers, which they keep telling me we need to do things faster, so we're going to support as much as we can.

GRTV: Yeah. Always one of the requests, isn't it?

Jonathan: Always one of the requests. Yeah.

GRTV: Yeah, yeah. And tell me, you mentioned the AIA Vitality healthy food benefit.

Jonathan: Yeah.

GRTV: So that's quite new, and I've-

Jonathan: Yeah

GRTV: ... only just found out about this recently.

Jonathan: Yeah.

GRTV: So can you-

Jonathan: Yeah

GRTV: ... tell me about that?

Jonathan: It launched last week.

GRTV: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan: And so Vitality's been very much, I think, known for fitness and activity. People wear an Apple Watch or a garment, and they do their steps and stuff and... But it's way more than that. And so healthy food benefit is branching out more into nutrition. So it's our partnership with Woolworths, and Woolworths, I think, have sort of 2 million customers. Nearly 190 stores around New Zealand. So if you're a Vitality member, you can now link your Everyday Rewards card to Woolworths. Mm-hmm. And when you go shopping, you'll get up to 25% off fresh fruit and veg. And when you-

GRTV: Okay

Jonathan: ... scan your card or your app with your card, and it goes straight through, and you can see it now. It comes out on your little receipt that you've had a discount off your healthy food.

GRTV: So is a feature like that something that advisers can use when they're working with clients?

Jonathan: Yeah. There's a lot of advisers who are very, very supportive of Vitality. We'd like to see it much broader. A lot of the big advocates of Vitality are advisers who use it themselves, and they understand the program. They can see what it does and how you have your regular health check, you do your steps, you get your mole map, and you get rewarded for it. You get vouchers, you get money, you get points, and all those types of things.

GRTV: Yeah. I like the air points. Yeah.

Jonathan: Yeah. But it's a very simple idea of incentivizing people to do healthy things. And, I could sit here all day telling you some of the great stories of how people are way healthier, they're living longer. I was over in Seoul with an AIA conference a few weeks ago. And the Vitality, the way they talk about it in certain countries is how do you live an extra five years? What would you do if you had an extra five years to live? That's a very different way of positioning insurance than we do currently.

GRTV: How long has Vitality been-

Jonathan: It's been around six years.

GRTV: Six years. And has AIA seen any sort of changes on its claims experience because of Vitality?

Jonathan: Yeah. There's a few things. One around the engagement the customers have with Vitality, that makes, they tend to stay longer with AIA, and they keep their policies for longer, which is good for the customer, good for the adviser, and good for us. We've seen people who have the Vitality program and use it regularly. They claim less, they're healthier, and they live longer, and do more that they want to do. So it has enormous benefits. I'm quite new to it. I only joined recently. And I run and I do Pilates, that comes through the app. I've had my mole map. I'm a typical man, I don't like going to the doctor. So I've been to the doctor, I've done the things that we all should do. But it's weird, it takes Vitality, it's like in your face looking at it to actually do it. Like it's- Well, I was going to ask you, what level are you at? Great. I've just clicked into silver.

GRTV: Right.

Jonathan: And there's ways of getting it higher. I need to do some stuff around mental health that's on the app and stuff. But yeah, it's really engaging.

GRTV: So go back to a bit of product now. So innovation is quite a focus for AIA at the moment. Can you tell me about what you've got coming down the track in that area?

Jonathan: Yeah. I think over the last couple of years, we haven't released new product into market. It's been a little bit of maybe catch up with some of our products. Recently we launched a product called Cover for Life, which is very different into the market. We've relaunched Severe Trauma out into the market, so that's for advisers. That's in our corporate schemes as well. We had a product called Specialists and Tests, which is, as you'll know, and I'm sure you've written about it on your site around the cost of healthcare. So Specialists and Tests was to help support advisers and customers in that space. So, trying to get customers into the system is always maybe the trouble, and Specialists and Tests helps you do that. So there's more coming. We've got quite a long roadmap of product releases. The market that we think we can be much better in is the business market. We've had a lot of feedback when I've gone around speaking to advisers about our business product range and our rural product range. So-

GRTV: That's a big pot of business sitting there-

Jonathan: Huge

GRTV: ... which I don't think anyone's really tackled.

Jonathan: Yeah. Huge. And the best way of building product is actually speaking to advisers who are speaking to customers to say what are their concerns or what are they looking for. And so we've gone through quite a long process of speaking to advisers, speaking to customers in the rural sector, in the business sector, to find out what are you actually worried about, what are the things that you think about, and then build product to actually suit those needs and wants. Yeah. And so how do you balance competitive pricing with unlocking long-term value? Yeah, it's very competitive at the moment. Yeah. Well, it's- It's very competitive at the moment. And I think I used the word before, we're really focused on value. We've been around 100 years, we want to be around another 100 years. So it's riding sustainable business. But we know it's competitive. Yeah. And so we've made some recent price changes. We'll still keep looking at our pricing to make sure that we're in market. We don't want to be the cheapest. We want to offer true value, and I think with good products, good benefits, good service, great relationships, and Vitality on top of that, and broadening that out, then I think AIA have a very meaningful offer.

GRTV: Yeah. Just to wrap it up. So, what is AIA's focus for the next 12 months?

Jonathan: Yeah, well, I've just got my half year review coming up, so it's quite helpful to tell you what's coming. But, still continually focus on getting out and speaking to advisers, understanding what they want and what they're doing. It's all well and good speaking to them, but you really need to listen, and so we've listened and we've done lots, and we'll continue to do that. We've got some products coming out before Christmas. We've got some other service changes that we're making. And yeah, you'll see a lot more of what AIA are doing in the coming months.

GRTV: Look forward to it. I'll keep an eye out.

Jonathan: Good to see you.

GRTV: Thanks, Jonathan. It's great to have you in the studio, and nice to catch up again.

Jonathan: Nice to catch up. Good to see you again.

GRTV: Awesome.

Jonathan: Thank you.

GRTV: Thank you.