Asteron’s removal of mandatory Personal Medical Attendant’s Reports (PMARs) for all new applications has contributed to significant growth over the past six months, the company has said.
Speaking at its ‘Partners Through Change‘ adviser roadshow in Sydney last week, Executive Manager for National Sales Mark Vilo, said the number of new applications received by the insurer had increased by 11% in the past six months.
… we identified that we weren’t actually getting any new information from PMARs
“Six months ago we identified that we weren’t actually getting any new information from PMARs (see: Asteron Market First – Eliminating PMARs). What we identified is that the information you (the adviser) were providing and the rich picture that you were painting about your client, enabled us to make a decision, and the PMAR gave us no further insight. So we decided to remove the mandatory requirement for PMARs.”
Mr Vilo said that applications in suspense had reduced by 17% because of the initiative.
“But we’ve also had a 29% increase in the amount of phone call discussions that we’ve had with people in your organisations,” he explained. “Rather than ask for PMARs just because the level of sum insured says so, we’ve changed the way that our industry does business by saying: ‘Let’s pick up the phone and have a conversation’.”
Asteron also announced a 10% premium discount for Income Advantage applications submitted after 15 August 2011, and the extension of a 5% commission bonus for applications submitted via AsteronEQ to 18 October 2011.
