Senior executives of the major four banks’ wealth management platforms were questioned about the breadth of their insurance panels at the 14th annual Wraps, Platforms & Masterfunds conference in the Hunter Valley on 11 September.
Investment Trends senior analyst Recep Peker, who moderated the ‘Big End of Town’ panel, noted his company’s research has found financial planners are demanding more choice from their platforms when it comes to insurance.
Colonial First State (CFS) has house brand CommInsure and Suncorp’s Asteron Life on its First Wrap platform; Westpac’s Asgard has BT Life and AIA, while BT Wrap only offers BT Life; MLC’s Navigator and MLC Wrap only feature MLC Insurance; and ANZ Wealth only offers OneCare through house brand OnePath.
Asked why First Wrap only offers two options, Colonial First State general manager, products and investments, Peter Chun said CFS “believes in making choice available”.
“The issue here for us is more about ensuring that the user experience is scalable, the adviser gets a good outcome in terms of the origination process, claims handling and premium payments,” Mr Chun said.
“We continue to explore choice, but we’re balancing those user experiences with having too much choice,” he said.
BT Financial Group head of product development Craig Lawrenson said he had a “similar perspective” to Mr Chun.
“I’m with Peter on the customer experience: how do you ensure across multiple providers that you provide that really integrated, consolidated customer experience?” Mr Lawrenson asked.
“That’s the conundrum you face with trying to get breadth in those technology-integrated areas.
“That’s our perspective, and there will be a similar perspective as we look at where [new BT platform] Panorama is going,” Mr Lawrenson said.
NAB Wealth general manager Dean Thomas said he looked at the issue of limited insurance choice on Asgard when he was head of transformation and fund manager governance at BT in 2009.
“One of the things that prevented us from going forward with it was that we felt that we just could not get the customer experience right,” Mr Thomas said.
ANZ Wealth’s head of wrap and SMSF, Prue Howden, said ANZ was keen to add more insurers to its wealth platform’s panel.
“We support having a multiple panel, ‘Webjet’-style insurance offering on the [ANZ] platform,” Ms Howden said.
“The challenge for us is the technology and the capability around the integration. We’re just not able to do that yet,” she said.
“But absolutely, that’s where we’d like to be in a few years’ time,” Ms Howden added.
