Millennials’ need for speed
A more instantaneous approach is needed in the life insurance sector to help engagement with millennials, Metlife Insurance believes.
Speaking on a panel at the Financial Services Council's (FSC) Life Insurance Conference this week, Metlife Insurance chief executive, Deanne Stewart, said timeliness and innovation were needed to help millennials participate in the sector.
"The average TPD [total and permanent disability] claim for example takes six months in our industry. A millennial's perspective would be ‘why does it take six months to get back to me whether I get this claim or not?'," she said.
"Timeliness, speed, the instantaneous nature and how we grapple with that as an industry will be crucial because the expectations will get sharper and sharper and I think the millennials will drive that."
Also on the panel, ANZ Australia wealth managing director, Alexis George, said as millennials were going to be the biggest economic power yet, the industry needed to challenge itself to engage a generation that only aligned to companies that held the same values as them.
"We have to really adapt to this generation. They use technology, they always have three devices on them, and they get information from their peers, not from big bad organisations," George said.
"So how do we adapt to that — it's incredibly challenging. We're basically an industry which might have digitised or automated but we haven't changed in a very long time."
Chairing the panel, the FSC's chief executive, Sally Loane said the first experience of life insurance a millennial has is when they watch their superannuation balance decrease thanks to premiums.
"They see $500 in their multiple superannuation fund accounts and in 12 months' time it's gone because of life insurance premiums and that's their first experience," Loane said.
"That's not a good experience. I wonder how those things can be changed, I don't know how to do that."
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