Life sector's future in ‘no man’s land’, says ANZ Wealth

During a panel discussion at AIST’s Insurance Ideas Exchange in Sydney yesterday, ANZ Wealth's head of life insurance, Gerard Kerr, said while the industry has a "reasonable outlook" for where it is heading with the Life Insurance Framework, recent political changes have meant the industry's future is now less clear.

“This situation we are in, this no man’s land, is in no one’s best interests,” Mr Kerr said.

“It is very tough to get clarity on what that sector is going to look like over the next couple of years because there is a lot of political uncertainty.”

“I just wish we had greater clarity so we can get on with it,” he said.

Mr Kerr added he believes the framework will still “come in” and the life insurance sector has a “reasonable desire” to change.

“I do think the process that we have gone through over the last six or seven months has sort of made the insurers and advice industry look at what it should be doing and try to think: well actually, yes, there have been things not working as well as we wanted [and as a result we] need to change, he said.

During a presentation held prior to the panel discussion, Mr Kerr displayed the breakdown, as of June 2015, of the channels through which ANZ’s retail life insurance is sold.

The breakdown showed that 46.9 per cent of products are sold by IFAs, while only 12.4 per cent are sold through the bank advice channel.

This was compared to 25.3 per cent which was sold through the group insurance channel.