Advisers give Aviva thumbs up
Aviva has been named Risk Company of the Year in the Money Management/Dexx&r Adviser Choice Risk Awards 2005.
Allan Griffiths, chief executive officer, said: “This nomination reflects the great work the whole team at Aviva has done over the past 12 months to make our risk offer the best in the market.”
In addition to winning the overall award, Aviva has also achieved first place for its term and total and permanent disability (TPD) product, Protection Life.
Tim Cobb, general manager product, says the fact that TPD is payable after three months rather than six is a big differentiator from other providers in the market.
He added: “We made a load of changes to this product in September. This included putting up our maximum term illness benefit to $2 million from $1 million.
“And we added some ADLs [activities of daily living definitions], because TPD tends to be a difficult benefit to explain to a client. So we thought by adding ADLs it’s much easier for an adviser to talk to a client and say ‘here it is in black and white; this is when you would be able to claim, and this is when you wouldn’t’. That’s one of the things which I think has gone down quite well.”
This is the first time in the three-year history of the awards that Aviva has taken home a trophy, with Prefsure Life winning the Risk Company of the Year category in 2003 and 2004.
Despite losing to Aviva in the overall award category, Prefsure Life won this year’s Trauma category for its product, Medical Catastrophe.
Geoff Black, managing director, said that product development is based on adviser input. “That’s what we have done for the last 12 years, and we’ve always had competitive products as a result.”
Tower was named winner of the Disability category for its Income Protection Plan. Tower’s products are also appearing for the first time in these awards.
With the creation of a new management team at Tower over two years ago, David Callander, risk chief executive officer, said: “We put together a whole set of actions to get our position back in the market . . . and we have now faced our business very much towards the advisers from a product, service and support point of view.”
MLC took home the trophy for the Business Overheads category, with its Business Expenses product.
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