Female market key to insurance growth

Identifying and delivering products catering for the specific needs of women has become an increasing focus for life insurance providers, however it does not always mean the creation of a new product.

Wealth Management Insurance, a National Group company, commissioned Newspoll to uncover the state of the insurance market and the uptake of products by women.

“The research showed a significant gap and opportunity for financial planners in looking at women in general,” Wealth Management Insurance chief executive officer Lisa Gray says.

She says only a handful of advisers have begun to focus on women. Given the shifts in society over the past 10 years, with women having children at an older age and changing domestic situations, there is a real need to protect all key members of the household.

But addressing the issues of women and life insurance products does not necessarily mean the need for a gender-specific product, according to Gray.

“Women do have different needs so you need to identify what cluster of needs there are, and then make sure there is flexibility in the product to allow for those needs,” she says.

“Fundamentally the core needs [of women and men] are similar, it’s about how you engage those needs.”

Flexibility of the product is also the message from Tower Australia’s risk product national marketing manager, Col Fullagar, who says concern about gender-specific products is their restrictive nature.

“It should be a product for a need, rather than a gender. The product needs to be in the middle and flexible enough to cater for both women and men,” Fullagar says.

“And you have to step back and ask, what is the market asking for?”

According to Fullagar, the market is asking for five things. He says people want to be paid out, in the event that something happens. Second, people want to be paid in line with the loss they experience. Third, he says the contract needs to be flexible and be able to be structured to individual needs and, fourth, it needs to be easy to understand. Lastly, Fullagar says people want a price that is predictable and sustainable, they do not want the premium to go up unexpectedly.

Similarly, Wealth Management Insurance has identified two key issues for marketing life insurance to women.

“We need to simplify things, they are far too complex. It’s hard to engage in these products and we need to make it easier for the customer to protect themselves,” Gray says.

Secondly, she says it is not about protection in isolation, but looking at life insurance as part of the integrated service offering of financial planning and one of the add on opportunities to wealth creation and accumulation.

Distributors have also recognised they need to educate advisers if they want to increase the number of women taking up insurance.

“Advisers are at the front end and know the bent of the individual clients,” Fullagar says.

Zurich Financial Services is another group looking at ways to increase the education of life insurance among women. Beginning with advisers, the group is teaching them why women need protection and insurance products.

“There is an under promotion of insurance to women, particularly income protection,” Zurich Financial Services risk product manager Meredith Barnes says.

Income protection is an area particularly in need of greater awareness among women.

“Eighty-five per cent of income protection is sold to men, but not 85 per cent of the work force is male,” Barnes says.