TAL has secured the title of Overall Platinum Life Company of the Year, with AIA Australia, MLC Life Insurance and NEOS being the runners up.
AFA president Michael Nowak congratulated TAL on winning the accolade and paid tribute to all of the finalists for stepping up in an “extraordinarily difficult environment”.
“These companies have risen to meet the challenges presented by the current pandemic and continue to deliver superior products and services to financial advisers and their clients,” Mr Nowak said.
All of the categories, winners and finalists for the 2020 Life Company awards are as follows:
| Award Category | Winner | Finalists |
| Overall Platinum Life Company of the Year | TAL |
• AIA Australia • MLC Life Insurance • NEOS |
| Service Quality | AIA Australia |
• MLC Life Insurance • TAL |
| Term Life/TPD | TAL – Accelerated Protection Life Insurance Plan |
• AIA – Priority Protection Life Cover Plan • BT – Protection Term Life Plan |
| Trauma/Critical Illness | MLC – Insurance Critical Illness Plus Plan |
• TAL – Accelerated Protection Critical Illness Premier Plan • BT – Living Plus Insurance |
| Income Protection | MLC – Insurance Income Protection Platinum Plan |
• TAL – Accelerated Protection Income Protection Premier Plan • AIA – Priority Protection Disability Income Plan |
| Risk Product Innovation – Adviser Support | MetLife – Content Partner with the Count Risk Academy | |
| Risk Product Innovation – Underwriting | NEOS – Enhanced Underwriting Rules Engine | |
| Investment Bond | AIA CommInsure | Australian Unity |
| Overall Annuity Provider of the Year | Challenger | AIA CommInsure |
| Long Term Income Stream | Challenger | AIA CommInsure |
| Short Term Income Stream | AIA CommInsure | Challenger |
| Underwriting Team of the Year | NEOS |
• Integrity Life • MetLife |
| Claims Team of the Year | OnePath |
• Clearview • TAL |
| BDM/Business Support Team of the Year | NEOS |
• Clearview • Zurich |
AFA partnered with Plan for Life, Riskinfo and Beddoes Institute for the Life Company of the Year awards, which aims to celebrate excellence in service, product and support delivered to advisers and their clients.
Rebecca Sheils, director of the Beddoes Institute (the company who’s adviser survey underpinned the three team-based awards) commented the firm’s research had indicated that new insurers have made “significant gains across underwriting and their BDM teams”.
“Underwriting performance across the industry overall dropped over the last 12 months. Likewise, claims performance across the industry overall also dropped,” Ms Sheils said.
“It was a challenging year for BDM teams in 2020 as reflected in slightly lower scores compared to 12 months ago. That said, the top performing insurers went above and beyond, delivering an exceptional standard of service and maintaining their strong and supportive adviser relationships under difficult circumstances.”
Rael Solomon, regional managing director of life insurance research provider Plan for Life, added, “Whilst 2020 was a difficult year for the life insurance market, life insurers have continued doing their best to support advisers through increased training efforts, maintained high levels of service for both advisers and customers and kept a high profile through advertising their products.”
Given the parlous state of the life industry, these awards are now analogous to the band member of the year awarded to members of the Titanic house band as the water swirled around their ankles. What a waste of time. If only industry rags didn’t need the advertising dollars we wouldn’t be hearing of this nonsense!
How can MLC win an award when they cant even put a policy into force within 30 days…..
Or provide a manual quote on an existing policy within 4 weeks?
MLC has been such a debacle in the last 12 months no adviser with integrity could continue using them with any shred of confidence unless they were required to (i.e. aligned). To give awards to a company in such disarray shows a lack of understanding of what insurance if actually for – to provide security and peace of mind and if ever relevant, benefits. Anyone having dealt with MCL in the last year would know without any doubt that the only thing MLC guarantees is that you can’t trust any form of outcome from them in any regard, and thus they are not suitable to serve the core purpose of insurance, regardless of what their cover may include or not – it’s just not relevant if you cant get the cover in place. As an adviser for over 20 years, I’ve never seen a debacle on the scale of MLC Insurance in 2020.
They cancelled my personal IP without letting me know, when I notified them they said it was a ‘system error’