I think it was a good day for advisers and advice businesses with these announcements. The majority of professional advised will welcome some balance with the changes happening that mean smaller advice businesses have a better footing to compete with the big boys, and ensure that access to the market for consumers is not unreasonably restricted. The announcement from government that commission in an acceptable yet to be determined form is here to stay also gives comfort that many of the present rem models have a place. Which is also comforting we don't have a government hell bent on repeating the mistakes our neighbours have made. It also suggests that they have listened to the overseas research that says fee based insurance advice achieves the opposite of what the government intends. Fee based approaches with banning of commissions in other markets has resulted in less access to advice, less advisers to give the advice, increased costs of advice, and also little to no change in premiums people pay while being less insured and more exposed to social support from the government. What is also interesting is the comparisons on commissions given by the detractors don't include our main trading partners in comparison, commission discussions include countries like Israel but exclude South Africa and the UK. Why? Because they don't support the intended dialogue by including them.

Good comments and the mirror can be a harsh critic. One we should look at more often in this regard

Having helped Anand with some of this, TPD is a very high bar of disablement, and the sums vs the premiums are often out of whack with the comparable trauma cover. So the bar is deliberately high and hard. By QPR’s own stats a TPD claim gets paid half as often as a death claim, that should be an indication that TPD claims can be painful. The surprising piece is with own occupation class 3 & 4 products, knees and joints are how potentially TPD claims for the more manual end of these occupations, something the insurers may not have anticipated well.

He's well ahead of the curve here. And he's right, you're ok doing sales but you don't want to do the marketing piece, it’s like saying I fix cars but I don't sell parts.

Anand did a great job with this claim. Tenacity and perseverance to secure the right outcome. One that's interesting in the application of TPD and potentially one that surprised the insurer as well as other advisers. Well done Anand!

Which is rather ironic given that insurers are progressively removing the requirement to provide BRA forms for replacement and never actually take any notice of what is written on them by the adviser. In this case, a loosely intermingled document that provides the insurer wriggle room if they ever wanted to legally pursue avenues to avoid a claim. Any insurer doing so is likely to find themselves facing a public and adviser backlash that would put their business at risk. Thus ensuring that dumb questions and terms in policies like this are never implemented.

Thanks Russell. I support increased visibility with health care. The often experienced circle the wagons approach to medicine when a colleague has not done quite as well as they should have needs to be addressed. Protecting those in the field that regularly screw up or cause harm need to be flushed out. I get that there will be negative comments made about good Dr's, they are human and have bad days too, but we've seen on the most part the approach to transparency with ratings result in a positive improvement rather than the extremes. When I experience conversations with Dr's that won't specifically confirm or deny the quality of services of another medical professional, I often turn it around to would you refer your client suffering from condition x to this specialist? The answer won't necessarily be a no, it will more likely be a "I would use ABC for that treatment" The number of cases I've seen with poor co-ordination of patient care, the lack of bedside manner leaving patients in limbo, and general lack of communication, means patients have poorer outcomes, even if the surgeon was brilliant because their recovery and rehab is left completely to chance. Part of the reason people end up in the medical system in the first place.

Good comments Russell. The salient point on this article is the none disclosure of the sleep apnea. The client knew it, uses a prosthetic every day and didn't disclose it. In his own words it was a managed condition and didn't feel that it was relevant. That's the core of this issue. Disclosure and deciding what the insurer should know after specifically asking, results in this situation. When I say core to the issue, when it comes to income protection and sleep apnea at underwriting, every insurer in New Zealand will decline cover. The rest, was fluff...

And this is the challenge. The pricing of level premiums is such that it impacts affordability for the breadth of cover now. In an ideal world the risk for a client should be declining over time, which should translate to a reduction in cover needs. We know with people continuing to upgrade on the property ladder that they typically go up before they come down. The other issue is the resulting challenge of being stuck on a product that won't do the job. Less likely with the passback of benefits most insurers have now, but is still a future risk for clients. The rule of passback is it's passed back provided it doesn't impact premiums. Which is part of the challenge. Future developments which become options with additional premium or benefits that do impact premium will not be passed back. This leaves the client on a level premium exposed to not moving when they should due to the often large gap between present premium and the current premium of the day. It's not an easy one to balance, more useful cover today or better affordability of cover later. My own view, born out by claims, the widest cover approach today is far more useful than the certainty of affordability later. The risk of not taking medical or income protection because of the future premium selection can mean they have no cover when they need it, because they didn't have the right cover when they needed it. It's not an easy decision, and one that needs to be put to clients as part of the advice process for clients to decide, as they ultimately have to live with the decision not us advisers.

Interesting stuff. Without seeing the whole case the "too expensive" comment is far to subjective to take a reglatory position on. That's an opinion and based on the individual investigator or the client opinion, not regulation. The client may be quite risk intollerant therefore a higher level of cover and a higher premium results. Again this comes back to record keeping and risk tolerance. However, whether risk tollerant or risk adverse the risk problem is the risk problem, this should always be stated, because it's expensive it doesn't make it go away. The other point that I have a challenge with, and thankfully it's not an option here, is parking your insurance in your super to eat up your super fund. I find this approach somewhat underhanded and misleading. I've done the Aussie RG146/dip FS papers and some of their approaches aren't in the best interests of their clients. Yes, there are some subtle tax advantages to the super approach, but it needs to be with an increased contribution and close management to ensure the intended saving goals for retirement are achieved. The reality is clients don't volentarily increase their super contributions and end up sacraficing the growth of their super for the payment of insurance premiums. However, the regulator is the regulator, and right or wrong you're playing in their sand pit. I hope we see a more pragmatic approach to some of these areas as international practice isn't always best practice for cleints.

Thanks for the share on this, many advice processes do assume insurable risks and don't discuss the non-financial instrument approach. The areas fo Government support are often limited for higher income bracket households but do form a significant part of the discussion when dealing with minimum wage risks. Estate planning, risk mitigation from business activities, wealth creation strategies to minimise debt and reduce reliance on insurance are plain missing in many insurance focused plans. Clients rely on us to be the expert, their expert, on their risk matters, if we remove a significant part of this process from our scope we have a duty to both inform and advise on the need to seek further advice, or even better refer that client to a trusted source for that advice. To sit and say I only do life insurance may be technically correct but it's not a helpful position to put your client in, frankly, it opens them up to finding that advice elsewhere with an adviser who manages their insurance risk and manages their other risk with specialist professions.