MetLife Australia will mark its re-entrance into the retail advised life insurance market with the release of modular life insurance policies.
The Head of Retail Sales at the insurer, Matt Lippiatt told Riskinfo that a comprehensive retail offering would be made available to financial advisers and its release had already begun with around 150 advisers, who were involved in the development of the products.
Lippiatt said the retail offering would be the first ever modular products released to advisers in Australia and were built around consumer feedback and understanding of life insurance and financial advice.
“We found that consumers did not understand the value of their life insurance, nor that of the advice provided alongside of it,” Lippiatt said, adding that life insurers to date have presented consumers with a choice of a ‘basic’ product or a ‘comprehensive’ product.
“In the past, policy holders have been presented with an either/or approach but we have built our products based on the goals and needs of clients, which reflects the trend in advice towards a goals-based, client centric approach,” he said.
Lippiatt said the modular products would also address the issue of affordability for consumers with the levels of sums insured based off the numbers of features they wanted to include in a product package.
“The products will provide a ‘plug-and-play’ functionality over the lifetime of the policy without the need to rewrite the policy, or in some cases without the need for further underwriting,” he said.
Financial advisers would be provided with access to the new products during the next few months, according to Lippiatt, who said distribution agreements are in place with major advice providers and the insurer was being added to Approved Product Lists.
“We are in a position to provide advisers with access to the products and will do that progressively over the remainder of 2018. We are open to work to speaking with all advisers and keen to work with those who share our values,” he said.
