To reduce the amount of time spent on client paperwork, more advisers are tapping into teleunderwriting services provided by Zurich Financial Services Australia, the group said.
Zurich said that in the current environment, there was a growing number of advisers who wanted to deliver more risk advice, but without getting bogged down with more administrative tasks.
Zurich Life Risk general manager Colin Morgan said with advisers busy transitioning to new remuneration models and preparing for further regulatory changes, more wanted to explore avenues that would reduce the amount of paperwork they had to do on behalf of clients.
“Zurich’s teleunderwriting service is now consistently used for one in five applications, sometimes hitting 25 per cent of applications,” Morgan said.
The reason it saved advisers time was because if they recommended a Zurich product, Zurich’s teleunderwriting team would finalise the application with the client over the phone rather than the adviser having to do it themselves.
It also meant that in cases where an application was submitted without all the relevant information, the adviser would not have to go back and forth between Zurich and the client, as Zurich would be able to nut out all the details directly with the client.
Zurich Life Risk chief operating officer Chris Rutherford said Zurich’s teleunderwriting services saved an adviser on average about 20 to 45 minutes per application.
On the back of increasing demand for teleunderwriting services, Zurich also announced that it has made two new appointments to its teleunderwriting team.
Pam Fitzgerald joins Zurich from a life broker firm, while Shayne Fortune joins the team from Zurich’s call centre.
