Westpac/BT announce growth strategy

Mark Smith

WestpacLife and the bank’s wealth management arm BT Financial Group are set to launch an insurance brand in an effort to increase their share of what they consider to be a burgeoning arena.

The move will see Westpac make its risk management products available to external advisers for the first time ever. The new brand, BT Insurance, will offer a suite of insurance products through BT’s well-established wrap platforms, scheduled to hit the market by October.

Westpac informed Money Management of its intention to launch BT Insurance a week after it confirmed its plans to partially float BT Financial, valued at around $1 billion, to secure and grow its position in funds management.

BT head of life insurance Mark Smith said the group, which has offered risk management products for 18 years, has concentrated on growing its market share extensively over the past six months and is now focusing on developing innovative products that make wealth management simpler and faster for both advisers and their clients.

BT Insurance’s first product to market, BT Life on Wrap, offers comprehensive life insurance cover (including term, total and permanent disablement, living and income protection) to advisers using the group’s wrap platforms (about one-third of Australian financial advisers altogether). Smith said the service model provides advisers with improved desktop functionality, an intuitive online quote process, comprehensive reporting and short-form applications that fast-track the underwriting process.

“What we’re essentially doing here is providing advisers who’ve grown used to the added control, choice and flexibility of a wrap platform with a comprehensive insurance offering. From a control perspective, advisers and clients can see all their information from one website. They can access their funds, insurance, tax information and nominated beneficiaries.”

Smith said the creation of the new brand and product offering was sparked by three key factors. Firstly, he said the ‘simpler super’ legislation changes, particularly the removal of reasonable benefit limits, have provided consumers with greater incentive to include life insurance in their superannuation schemes. As about 60 per cent of BT’s wrap platform business is superannuation-related, Smith expects heavy demand for BT Life from advisers looking to add insurance to the superannuation schemes they have already created for clients.

Secondly, advisers using BT’s wrap platforms have been pressing the group for a comprehensive, fully-integrated insurance offering for some time now.

“And what we’re delivering is a premium, top-quartile priced product which enables advisers to combine their investment and insurance business. We believe it’s equivalent to any standalone insurance product on the market.”

Thirdly, Smith said combining Westpac Life with BT’s wrap platforms would better enable the group to deliver competitive risk management products to a much wider market.