Planners: clients wearing cost of inefficiencies
Marianne Perkovic
The insurance industry’s “inefficient systems are holding planners back” from recommending risk products, according to Count Financial chief executive Marianne Perkovic.
Perkovic called on the insurance industry to create an e-wrap of risk products, adding it was “disappointing” that the idea hasn’t yet been embraced.
Speaking at the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) national conference, Perkovic said “a lack of collaboration and co-operation” by the insurance industry to create risk platforms is adding to the cost of advice — a cost being borne by financial planners and their clients.
Insurance products must be able to form part of the same streamlined process as investment products to make the financial planning process more efficient.
“Why can’t you all get together to provide a solution?” Perkovic challenged the insurance industry.
“It’s the advisers and their clients that are paying for the inefficiencies in the industry.”
The conference session focused on how to better use financial planners as a distribution channel for insurance products.
Perkovic said the common belief among product providers that the problem lies in the sales skills of financial planners is misguided.
“Product providers need to understand that financial planners don’t want to be called sales people,” Perkovic said.
According to Perkovic, insurance product providers frequently come to her offering sales training for her adviser base. Instead, Perkovic argued that financial planners needed to be educated about risk, as a result of the insurance industry being “too complex for financial planners who are already wearing too many hats”.
Perkovic proposed that product providers create simple insurance products that planners can more easily embrace and promote the benefits of more simply to clients. She did, however, acknowledge that “more complex products get better [research] ratings and this needs to be changed”.
The theme of the IFSA national conference this year is ‘Innovate 08’, but Perkovic had an innovative idea of her own.
“Let’s stop talking about it and commit to a common goal — Simplify 09.”
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