The Plan For Life Risk Benchmarking Customer Survey was conducted in June and July from 2011 to 2013, and was completed by three groups including advisers and paraplanners, dealer licensees and practice management staff (administration).
Fourteen thousand responses were collected this year from 70 dealer groups covering 11 different companies including AIA Australia, AMP, AMP Elevate, Asteron, BT Financial Group, CommInsure, Macquarie, MLC, OnePath, TAL and Zurich.
BDM support improved the most in the area of strategy execution and support consistency across the network, according to licensees. However, they rated the ability of BDMs from different companies slightly lower than in the previous year.
Practice support staff rated administration support lower than in 2011 but stated their access to senior staff members in order to resolve issues had improved.
The transparency of claims procedures had also improved while there were mixed responses towards claims support.
Practice support staff considered life company activities focused on industry growth and overall support to have declined in the last three years.
Licensees also believed life company activities had declined, but rated them better than in 2011.
Quote software received poor results from support staff, experiencing a decline, while advisers believed it had improved.
According to licensees, reporting remained consistent or improved over the last three years, particularly in regard to commission reporting. Overall ease of business also improved.
Advisers claimed there had been improvements in administration, proposal-straight-through-processing, and life company activities in the past three years.
