moneyblog

Planning for the inevitable: some forethought can help

Financial advisers helping clients with terminal illness claims may find this useful: 

Digital Revolution in Health - MOH Overview

At the recent FSC conference, Navigating Change, there was an excellent panel discussion which covered the area of digital transformation in health services. So often we hear how 'management' shouldn't be prioritised over 'frontline' staff yet the examples given in that panel session showed how digital could enable far greater reach, accuracy, and efficiency in health provision if we could invest more in it. My favourite examples from Doctor William Reedy were:

1. Apps helping teachers to diagnose conditions in kids at school - and forwarding information to specialists for review, resulting in consultations with parents and much earlier intervention
2. Clinics run in remote parts of Taranaki by nurses with doctors consulting virtually.    

Insurers, are fans of digital data too - to enhance underwriting while reducing costs. The Ministry of Health 2020 strategy overview is available at this link. 

 

News speculation on buyers for ANZ insurance and Comminsure

Goodreturns quotes The Australian and I saw a Reuters article today on the likely buyers for two of the largest insurance businesses in New Zealand: AIA may buy Sovereign, and Zurich may buy ANZ's insurance businesses. If true, this makes good sense for both. AIA achieves scale, which it did not have in New Zealand, and valuable additional size in Australia. Sovereign may benefit from being returned to specialist insurance ownership. The same applies for Zurich, and it will be interesting to have Zurich in this market. They may become an effective competitor in the adviser market in New Zealand with the purchase. That is, if the purchases go ahead. 

Sorted: Live KiwiSaver Q&A

On Tuesday the 19th of September Sorted.org are hosting a live KiwiSaver Q&A session. More details can be found at this link.

Causes of Death and Non-Underwritten Products

A little while ago we blogged about the causes of death, the main causes do not change a lot in short periods of time, so the table below, based on Ministry of Health data from 2011, is still a good views of the main causes. The reason for returning to this is to consider the causes of death in relation to the exclusions common in non-underwritten policies. 

Pre-existing conditions, whether with a blanket cut-off at application, or with the ability to include them after five years without recurrence or treatment, are most likely to affect the categories of cancers, heart attacks, strokes, and respiratory diseases. What proportion of these causes are likely to emerge from a pre-existing condition or pre-disposition?

Now look at some of the other categories - take accidents, at 15% of the causes of death, and recall the exclusions relating to heights, speeds, presence on a building site, and certain occupations. 

Lastly, look at the rate for suicide, which might also be considered a death from depression or mental illness, this is one of the top five causes of death at 8% of this group, exceeding the level for strokes. Many of the non-underwritten policies contain long suicide exclusion clauses (up to five years), and increasingly bank insurers are lengthening their exclusion clauses as well (up to three years). 

These are the factors behind the recent changes made by Quality Product Research to the increased penalty for pre-existing conditions exclusions in the product quality database for Momentum Life and ASB Easylife. Other non-underwritten products will be added to the database and scored along similar lines. 

 

Chatbots the first step to economically viable AI

nib are the first health insurers in NZ to offer customer assistance from an artificial intelligence powered virtual bot named 'Frankie'. The chatbot provides convenient  and fast responses to clients queries and allows 24/7 support. Click here to read more.

Initially started by tech companies struggling to cope with the service requirements of tens of millions of users the world over, the implementation of chatbots is now becoming mainstream. Initially the bots can be of limited functionality, but one of the most important learning mechanisms is regularly interacting with customers. The more queries are typed into the chatbot, the better engineers can tune the AI to serve appropriate responses. Some chatbots are actively supervised meaning that a human operator watches over the actions of a group of bots, and is alerted to problems and can seamlessly step in. Others, like nib's alert the customer to the point when the 'bot has run out of ideas, and suggests the user calls an 0800 number. 

Sun Life of Canada's 'bot is a good example of the category - Link. 

UK: Jane Austen features on 'the new ten'

Jane Austen features on the new ten pound note issued by the Bank of England. Link. This is a polymer note, new for the UK, but with security features familiar to New Zealanders. It is groundbreaking in other ways, too. Jane Austen's presence helps with gender equality, less obviously (for most of us) there are a series of raised dots, a mark developed in conjunction with the Royal National Institute for the Blind which identify the note for blind users of money. 

Sovereign shifts to a bank-grade hybrid cloud in ten weeks

This article outlines the process Sovereign went through in 10 weeks and the other parties involved to develop their Quick Quote service currently running on their website.

The value in a balanced scorecard

I met an adviser once who was solely focused on meeting client needs. He helped everyone. He was a lovely man, desperately poor, and about to go broke. His ability to help people was being hindered by his inability to charge appropriately for his work. Not everybody needs this for free - but he was trapped, somehow, in the idea of working for nothing. 

I have met far more people who have undermined their reputation by a focus solely on the money. Gradually compromise after compromise is made to the point that, decades later, they are unrecognisable - they have become something they didn't plan to be, and people shy away from them. Their intent shows. Really, how much more money do you need? You can learn to feel good by giving too - and the prize for pro-bono work at the recent national adviser conference is a reminder. Put that in your life too.

Being focused on any single goal can undermine the value of a whole enterprise. That's why a balanced scorecard can be helpful. You can walk away from a deal and tick off all the things you achieved: balance, integrity, self-esteem, honesty. Sure, someone will do that deal, but maybe it's their turn, maybe I don't have to, and you don't have to either. After all, choosing how you spend your time is the essence of a good life. 

If We All Did These 4 Things, It Would Cut the Cancer Death Rate in Half

According to this article by Maria Masters we could significantly reduce our chances or getting cancer, and possibly reduce deaths from cancer by 50% by doing these four things.

Quality Product Research Update: V105

We have just uploaded QPRV105 onto Quotemonster and have also distributed it to all other subscribers. This version includes the following changes:

1. Momentum Life added for Life
2. AIA Business TPD, Trauma
3. Accuro update to Smartcare and Smartcare+
4. Income Protection review changes
5. All funeral providers updated
6. Review Funeral Cover item

Probably the most significant change is to income protection. You will note a narrowing of the range from the top to the bottom of income protection scores, due to reduction of the incidence rates for a series of secondary cover items. 

Latest on Goodreturns

My latest piece on goodreturns highlights the suicide rate data and coverage of depression / mental illness. Link. 

“Life Expectancy” – What does this actually mean?

Our World in Data has this interactive chart showing how life expectancy has increased globally in the last couple of centuries. 

'Life expectancy is one of the key measures of a population’s health, and an indicator used widely by policymakers and researchers to complement economic measures of prosperity, such as GDP per capita. It is easy to see that the trends in the chart below are a fantastic achievement reflecting widespread improvements in global health.'

Swiss Re CEO Predicts Insurtech's "Unsexy" future

Swiss Re CEO Christian Mumenthaler estimates that insurtech will take out 50% of the costs of the insurance industry, quoted by coverager.com. 

Understanding Bowel Cancer

A good story about the importance of identifying bowel cancer early, and the national screening programme, including comments from head of health products at Sovereign, Nicola Cresswell, in this article 'Understanding bowel cancer' published in the North & South magazine - here is the link.

Sovereign claims release

Len Elikhis has a review of recent claims date in this summary post - link. 

The Difference Between Suicide and Assisted Dying

Simon O'Connor, National MP for Tamaki, has criticised Jacinda Ardern for encouraging suicide by supporting euthanasia according to this report by Henry Cooke in stuff.co.nz. What was interesting was the debate about what the difference between assisted dying and suicide is, if in fact there is a difference. Simon O'Connor is not the first person to call euthanasia, or assisted dying, suicide - several people in our industry do the same. O'Connor says its the same, because it is the intention to end your own life. But there are clear differences: a person suffering deep depression, or other mental illness making a choice in a moment of darkness without any help or medical assistance, alone, to end their life is obviously an avoidable death. That is different to a person who has suffered a prolonged disease, is under medical supervision, is in a great deal of pain, and then proceeds to consult at least two independent medical experts and then has their case referred to an independent panel for evaluation has obviously had extensive medical assistance. Assisted dying is something that usually the old and the terminally ill use in jurisdictions where it is available, whereas our suicide problem is particularly acute in the 15 to 19 age group also underlines the difference. You might still have the view that neither should be legal, but you cannot meaningfully say these two processes are the same. 

Breast cancer 'game changer' here - but only for women who can afford it

Medsafe NZ has just approved the use of Ibrance for those with advanced hormone receptor positive and HER2-negative breast cancer. Ibrance is a new "game changer" drug for women with a certain type of 'common and incurable type of breast cancer.

Ibrance is produced by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and is taken as an oral pill. 

In a statement, Pharmac director of operations Sarah Fitt said the agency had been "actively engaging" with Pfizer, which is the only supplier of the drug. "Pharmac is looking forward to receiving a funding application, and considering Pfizer's medical evidence in depth. "Pharmac will be in a position to make a fulsome comment on this treatment once our review is complete."

Click here to read more.

Handling the deceased’s social media

As social media usage continues to grow this article discusses how it is now being a 'legitimate consideration that should be incorporated into estate planning discussions with your clients.'

Facebook now has the function to allow users to nominate a "legacy contact". This gives someone control of your Facebook account after death. There are certain functions the "legacy contact" can have access to such as updating the profile and cover photos, posting memorial notices or other messages on the deceased's account to notify friends and family of the death/funeral.

Other social media sites are following Facebook's steps and are outlined in the article - it appears that Twitter, although one of the most popular sites does not yet offer any sort of legacy contingencies. 

Navigating Change Conference

Navigating Change, the first FSC conference, combined with the Workplace Savings conference, on day one has been great. The venue, speakers, and programme have all provided a really worthwhile programme.

I particularly enjoyed meeting Sally Loane, CEO of the FSC in Australia, the panel discussion which Sally joined, with Laurence Kubiak of NZIER, Mary Holm, and Nadine Tereora, CEO of Fidelity Life, and the session on digital in the health system.

Also a great panel discussion on superannuation, and the Spotlight session on behavioural economics. 

Congratulations to the winners of FSC awards, Mark Daniels of Fidelity Life, Rachel Macdonald of AMP, and Ana-Marie Lockyer of ANZ the other FSC award winners.

My grateful thanks to the FSC and members for awarding me the Shaping the Future Award. As the industry is going through a great deal of change there are many people who could qualify for this. 

Also congratulations to the Workplace Savings award winners. A special mention for David Boyle of the CFFC for both his ability to manage the audience and his introduction to the award for product disclosure statements. 

Finally, Richard Klipin and the FSC team all deserve a great deal of credit for bringing the FSC to this point.