Editorial

Managing Editor – Peter Sobels

Working Together

One of the biggest challenges facing Australia’s life insurance industry – a challenge on which it has yet to deliver, is to successfully instil the message about the value of life insurance in the mind of the general public.

At the moment, however, the music that could be heard in achieving this challenge is being drowned out by the noise of controversial legislation, claims and advice scandals and feelings of disenfranchisement by many in the adviser community who feel their voice is not being heard or represented.

As a collective, the industry has been diverted from its ultimate goal of instilling the life insurance message in the mind of the consumer because it is addressing these other issues.

Try stepping out of the industry for a brief moment and place yourself in the mind of the consumer. Stand on a balcony and look down on the life insurance industry below you. What do you see?

You see an industry that is searching for answers. An industry that, try as it may, cannot find a way to speak with a united voice. An industry in which some of its stakeholders are struggling to come to grips with a changing world (technology, consumerism, social connections).

It would be a little difficult for the consumer looking down on this tableau to feel any great sense of confidence that they would be able to give the industry the gift of their trust.

But crises always end. There will be a tomorrow in which the industry can and will regain lost ground – where its reputation will be enhanced and where trust will be restored.

For this to happen, however, will require genuine engagement and cooperation between advisers, licensees, insurers and other critical players in the sector, including adviser associations and the regulator.

At the recent FSC Annual Life Insurance Conference, ASIC’s Peter Kell told delegates there is too much finger pointing in the life insurance sector. He’s right. Later in the day, there were suggestions that the industry should come together – work together, to sort out its issues for the betterment of all. Damn right it should! But actions speak louder than words.

I like the idea of an industry summit, at which all industry stakeholders can have their say, and out of which there can emerge a genuine collaboration between these various interests in addressing, and acting on, the issues that must be resolved.

It’s easy to support the call for a life industry summit, but the challenge is to actually make it happen and to deliver results, so that the industry can then turn its collective efforts to achieving what, until now, it has failed to accomplish, being a significantly greater penetration of the life insurance message into the minds and lives of Australians.

Peter Sobels

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