Tower to launch revamped protection business

David Callander

Tower will go live on April 2 with its revamped protection business that has seen changes to adviser service delivery and product upgrades.

“We have been doing a lot of hard work in late 2006 and early this year in improving the process of new business and claims,” Tower retail life insurance chief executive officer David Callander said.

“It is all about underwriting and the speed at which we can get proposals onto our books.”

He said the aim was to deal with advisers’ proposals quickly to ensure they wrote more Tower business rather than turning to the company’s rivals.

“We have got to work with the adviser to deliver quick decisions on proposals so we get a higher proportion of the business,” Callander said.

“This also means a better outcome for the clients.”

“If you have a client under 50 with very few problems, it will only take about 30 minutes to fill in the proposal as they may not need to see a doctor.”

Tower has also re-structured its sales organisation into a state based ‘pod’ structure.

Each state will have a sales team supported with a new business consultant and an underwriter.

Callander said once a week the team will meet and discuss all new business proposals, which means if one of the team is unavailable, there is always somebody in the state office to answer questions from advisers.

The new business consultant’s role will be to chase up reports and eliminate delays in a new business proposal.

“We have found ringing doctors for results works better than sending e-mails. People can ignore e-mails,” Callander said.

“The BDM will still have the relationship with the adviser, but there are now other members of the team to chase delays.”

Tower has also made minor changes to the product range that Callander admits is designed to keep them competitive in a changing marketplace.

These include allowing the insured sum for TPD to be increased to $3 million, removal of the insured being employed for at least three months for TPD cover and waiving premiums if the insured becomes unemployed in an income protection plan.

“The changes to term life are small as this is a product that is decided on price by the client,” Callander said.

“But we do see a lot of product differentiation in income protection and crisis insurance so the changes are designed to make it easier for the adviser to write the business.”

The changes to both product and service delivery is designed to increase Tower’s market share by 15 per cent this year, he said.

“The IFA (risk) market grew between 8 to 10 per cent in the last year so we want to increase our business by about 15 per cent in 2007,” Callander said.