Asteron Life has spent $10 million on an overhaul of its technology platform as part of a move to reduce costs to its financial advisers and end clients.
Asteron Life adviser distribution executive general manager Jordan Hawke said the decision to make the multi-million-dollar changes stemmed from feedback from advisers and the Suncorp Life-owned company’s response to regulatory change.
“We recognise that the cost of doing business with advisers is going to go up [with reform], so our job is to try and make the whole application processes as seamless and efficient as possible, so we can strip out some of their costs in their business,” Hawke said.
“We also recognise in the current economic climate the discretionary dollar of every household is under pressure and so there was a need to look at how we could make insurance more affordable to them.”
While he could not comment on the specific cost savings the revamp would afford advisers, he said the changes would save advisers time and therefore money.
“In a traditional sense in upgrading software and products, historically it’s been a really involved heavy staff commitment, manual process, and it costs a lot to do it and it takes a long time to do it. The new platform that we’ve moved to is more efficient,” he said.
Asteron Life began the overhaul 12 months ago and was confident it could recover its $10-million investment in the next few years, he said.
In line with the revamp, Asteron Life has rolled out a new life insurance package, Asteron Life Complete.
The new package came in response to adviser demand for more certainty around select definitions and claims, Hawke said.
In particular, advisers are seeking greater certainty regarding trauma insurance around heart attacks, stroke, bypass surgery and cancer.
“We’ve moved to include minor and silent heart attacks into our definition and that basically means if a cardiologist says ‘you’ve had a heart attack’, they now get paid a full benefit,” Hawke said.
Asteron Life has also changed the definition regarding cancer, in particular breast cancer in women.
The key changes the package focuses on are providing a more affordable and simplified income protection range; reduced pricing for many occupations, including select white-collar professionals and skilled tradespeople; and ages.
The package also includes policy terms created specifically for medical professionals; rehabilitation benefits for self-employed professionals; discounts for healthy lives through the Healthy Lives Option; easy-to-use adviser technology; and a commitment to service and support.
