In the statement, Canstar said that findings from a recent NobleOak Life Insurance Whitepaper found that almost 50 per cent of people seeking life insurance would be happy to buy it online, and that one third of people are already researching their options online.
NobleOak Life chief executive Anthony Brown said that the life insurance buying process is being heavily disrupted by digital technology.
“Customer behaviour is rapidly transforming the industry and driving insurers to be more digitally innovative; 32 per cent of people seeking to obtain financial advice for life insurance use the internet to do so,” Mr Brown said.
Canstar awarded NobleOak Life its 2016 Outstanding Value – Direct Life Insurance award, based on its annual research of direct life insurance policies.
Canstar’s research also found evidence of policies offering impressive levels of coverage and additional features for very reasonable annual premiums, the statement said.
Mitchell Watson, Canstar’s group manager for research and ratings, said that direct life insurance policies have become increasingly feature-rich over the past 12 months.
“We are seeing a greater number of funds offering optional extras such as funeral insurance, trauma cover and total and permanent disability cover,” Mr Watson said.
“We are also seeing an increase in the maximum sum insured value, an increase in the number of funds offering guaranteed future insurability and premium waiver under certain conditions.”
This is like a paid editorial in that Nobleoak hate advisers and have decided that advisers are not needed in their business and now they are trying to talk up direct on line sales.
That is why two other large life insurance companies have just shut down their direct operations with significant losses.
I will now await the Board of Nobleoak getting rid of the present CEO when the cashflow die off and then wonder what they are going to do to save the company.