Demand for insurance has taken a hit this year, but despite the challenge, TAL has been recognised as the winner in the insurance category for the second year in a row.
TAL Life retail distribution general manager Niall McConville says demand for insurance protection is still present from the independent financial adviser (IFA) space, however, flows haven’t been helped by the struggle for IFAs to find new clients.
“This has made it a challenging environment for everybody,” McConville says.
“In the IFA space, the market has actually been flat and I’m going to say it’s the first time in 10 years that the market hasn’t grown, so it’s been a bit of a flat year.
“There’s been a lot going on in the market in relation to the Future of Financial Advice reforms and bad press unfortunately, which has impacted advisers’ ability to generate new sales.”
Nevertheless, he is optimistic about TAL’s Accelerated Protection offering.
“Over the last month or so, we’ve started to see some good flows again,” he says.
“I think we’re going to finish the year a lot stronger than how we started it – TAL’s year finishes on 31 March – so I’m confident we’ll come home very strongly.”
TAL targeted the SMSF market a few years ago, he shares.
“We felt that no other life insurance companies were really focusing on that market, so we did a lot of work on it with advisers and accountants, so it’s fantastic to see that we’re doing the right thing,” he says.
“We think our offering is pretty close to what advisers want, apart from one capability we will be adding shortly, from an SMSF point of view.”
Currently, advisers are looking for the ability to offer their clients the potential to fund some of their insurance needs through the SMSF, he reveals.
“More and more advisers are structuring their clients’ insurance [this way] and it has been an area for growth within the IFA space,” he says.
“We’ll be bringing something new out that will allow advisers to continue to evolve down that road.”
He says TAL’s award win was a result of the education it has pushed out to the wider market.
“It has all come down to the team and the work we’ve been doing around the reasons why it’s a good idea to have insurance in an SMSF and the ramifications if you don’t,” he says.
“Our strategy over the past 12 months has been about educating advisers and one of the things we strongly believe in at TAL is that advisers need to be able to articulate the value of what they do because in this day and age of consumerism, people are going online and having a look at their insurance to see whether they can get a better deal elsewhere.
“We’ve built full-day workshops and professional development days to help advisers articulate their value. That’s been a big push for us.”
TAL Life head of market development David Denison collected the award on the night.
Award winners
- Class Super: SMSF accounting software/administration
- Cromwell: Property
- Macquarie: Cash and term deposits
- FIIG Securities: Fixed income
- Westpac: Residential property loans
- CommSec: Australian shares
- TAL: Insurance
- BT Wrap: Investment platform
- Magellan: International shares
