moneyblog

FSC Conference Highlights

The FSC has a series of video highlights available on their Youtube Channel. Here is Jazz Thornton who gave the keynote close to the conference.

 

QPR Database Updated to Version 11.6

The Quality Product Research live database has been updated to version 11.6, which has also been distributed to institutional subscribers.

Cancer diagnosis strikes last surviving brothers of tragedy-hit family

Here is a sad story of a family struck by tragedy way too many times.

The Givealittle page set up on their behalf reads:

Marcus (23) father of 3, and Hamiora (25) father of 2, are both battling different forms of Cancer. Both have suffered a hard life from a young age, and need all the help they can get to ease the ongoing pain.

In 2000, at the age of 3 & 5, they buried their Mother (25) who passed away from domestic violence. 2003, they buried their younger brother Ryan (6) who died in a car crash. 2015 brought more grief as they buried their beautiful older sister Horowai (25), who battled gastric cancer for 2months then sadly passed away.

Now in 2018, the only surviving siblings left, Marcus who is battling Cena Carcinoma Cancer requires surgery to remove his stomach & his older brother Hamiora is battling Lymphoma Cancer, which has formed a large Tumor in his side which is quite aggressive.

Southern Cross returns to a new home in the Christchurch CBD

Chief executive Nick Astwick said the shift from offices in Burnside to the CBD was like "moving back home. Having a place in an innovation zone rather than a corporate zone is really critical to our culture," Astwick said in this article.

 

Life-Info: Value for Money, Comparing Price and Replacing Insurance

The good people over at Life-Info have written some articles Value for Money, Comparing Price, and Replacing insurance.

Insurance industry: celebrating 125 years of women's suffrage

I saw this rather good post from the folks at Pinnacle Life celebrating 125 years of women's suffrage by highlighting the number of women in senior roles there. That prompted a quick count up - the insurance industry (well, personal risks like life and health) does pretty well for gender balance with several of the leading CEOs being women and many senior executives. CEOs include, Gail Costa at CIGNA, Naomi Ballantyne at Partners Life, Nadine Tereora at Fidelity Life, Susan Basile for BNZ Life, as well as Gillian Vaughan at Pinnacle Life. If you then move to the senior executive level the trend continues. AIA comes to the fore with six of eleven senior leaders being women. At Fidelity and AMP about a third of their execs are women. Bank management teams are more networked but many bank CEOs happen to be women right now.

Who has Minister Faafoi been meeting?

This article in Goodreturns shows a list of all the people and groups that have met with Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi in the three months ending June 2018. I think it is a good step towards more open government if ministers release details of their meetings. Green Party MPs have been doing this of their own accord, whereas some others have released the information after OIA inquiries. I feel it should be a matter of course that the information is released.

Latest Goodreturns Article

In this short piece at goodreturns I mention the big societal changes that can be so big, and slow, that they are easy to miss.

Health insurer Southern Cross makes loss, premiums rise for policyholders

Southern Cross has announced a loss of $13.3 million in the year ending 30 June 2018. It is believed that premiums for policyholders are likely to increase again this year by a similar 6 per cent to last year. Knee and hip replacements are the biggest claims cost for Southern Cross Health Society costing them just over $45 million in the same year. Click here to read more. 

UK: one insurance fraud committed every minute

Thanks for Jon-Paul Hale for bringing this article to our attention. In the UK there is an insurance scam being committed every minute. In 2017 a total of 562,000 insurance frauds were detected by insurers. Of these there were 113,000 fraudulent claims, and 449,000 dishonest insurance applications. The article describes some of the fraudsters claims and the punishments they received. Most of these are general insurance-related.

What's interesting about the article is that, either you can believe that people in the UK are peculiarly dishonest, or that their justice system is completely incapable of detecting when the insurer is having them on, or you begin to get the idea that some people feel that being dishonest with insurers is somehow 'okay', even, a kind of victimless crime. Of course, it has victims. The victims are insurers, and their shareholders - and you may not feel sorry for them - but mainly, they are other policy holders. It is worth noting, while looking at fraud statistics, that there are also case of just honest mistakes: people put the wrong thing down on the form, and insurers decline a claim that should be paid.

Mistakes happen everywhere. But if you read the article, you get a sense of the difference between fraud and mistakes.

You can even google insurance fraud videos. The one below is one of my favourites. 

Look for the Dinosaur at the Financial Advice NZ Conference and be in to win

Keep an eye out for the Dinosaur at the Financial Advice New Zealand Conference in Rotorua in a couple of weeks time and be in to win an awesome prize from Quotemonster.

Jobs on the line as computers close more sales than humans

NZ Herald believes that the future generation of workers will have their skills augmented by machines and that the risk is real for sales people become a thing of the past. Click here to read more. If you read through this list you realise that the sales jobs they are talking about boils down to order-taking. I still remember when we used to have a stationery sales person visit the office when I worked at Sovereign. That story now seems as quaint and old-fashioned as when an old friend talked about traveling from Birkenhead wharf to Glenfield on a horse drawn bus. The real story here is about changing your value-add.

Battling cancer and fighting for funding

Dr Rosalie Stephens says it's crucial that PHARMAC moves more quickly when revolutionary treatments come along to prevent patients from deteriorating or potentially dying as they cannot personally afford the treatments.

According to this article it takes the UK on average 143 days to fund a modern medicine after it is registered for use, compared to 370 days in Australia. In NZ, patients wait on average 517 days for PHARMAC funding, with no time frame for decisions.

 

Corin Dann, Cranes, and Grant Robertson

In his recent discussion with Corin Dann at the Financial Services Council Conference (an interview you can find on Podcast here) Grant Robertson mentioned in passing the 'crane index' as an indicator of economic activity. Or at least construction activity. For those of us in Auckland, we have seen a lot of cranes recently, and now you can get a more detailed view of exactly how many cranes are operating by following the fascinating RLB Crane Index for Q1 2018 here.

End of life debate draws a crowd

Approximately 400 people recently gathered in Orewa to take part in a debate about the End of Life Bill sponsored by ACT leader David Seymour. The Bill aims to establish a legal process by which people with a terminal illness or a grievous and irremediable medical condition could have the option of requesting assisted dying.

'Promoting the Bill was David Seymour and former Labour MP Maryan Street. Opposed was North Shore MP Maggie Barry (deputy chair of the Justice Select Committee that is currently hearing submissions on the Bill) and Dr Stephen Child, a GP and chief medical officer of Southern Cross Healthcare.'

Click here to read more. 

As human life lengthens due to improvements in medicine, hygiene, diet, and exercise, this will become an increasing issue. It is good to see a strong debate about the issues on both sides of the argument, and it appears to cut across party lines.

Groundbreaking health research into the Mongrel Mob

Fifth-year medical student Jordan Tewhaiti-Smith has used his connections with the Mongrel Mob to conduct a study into the health of the gang members. 'The study, which included 52 Mongrel Mob Notorious gang members from Dunedin, Lower Hutt and Turangi, found New Zealand's largest gang's high incarceration rate, common intravenous drug use, and un-certified tattooing put them at a higher risk of contracting Hepatitis C.'

Click here to read more. 

Fidelity Life gets in behind new farmers

Fidelity Life have launched Key Person Cover for Farmers. 

Adrian Riminton, Fidelity Life’s Chief Distribution Officer, says the early years in business for new farmers can be financially risky and involve high debt levels.

“If illness or injury strikes them or a key employee and they’re unable to work, they could struggle to keep their business going. Key Person Cover for Farmers helps cover the cost of a replacement while they recover.

Click here to read more. 

The value of the price signal

Grant Robertson appears to be worried that insurers are sending price signals about earthquake zones and flood risks, but I think he has that all wrong: properly pricing these risks encourages development in other places, reduces the cost to taxpayers in emergencies, and also helps people make better choices to mitigate climate change. Prices in general, and insurance in particular have a role to play in changing behaviour. In truth, I think this government knows that - otherwise they wouldn't tax cigarettes and petrol so much.

Young widow's tale: No will, no money

As part of Money Week Amanda Wilton-Skinner tells her story here about having to wait a year before getting access to her husband's life insurance and assets after he died due to him not having a Will.

Conduct and competence

Competence to enter into a contract is an under-explored area of conduct risk. This news is an exemplar of why, although Australian, I have no doubt that similar problems occur here. I recall one case in the news about an elderly person who was sold funeral cover over the phone. After reading the article I had to doubt the competence of the person, and therefore the care exercised by the call centre sales-person. Of course, this is not a problem isolated to call centres, or financial services. Elderly people are often warned against answering the door to salespeople due to the risk of pressure sales tactics being applied. Which is why, possibly the only thing I object to about the Herald article is the title. Maybe, rather than 'bombshell' it should say 'yet again...'