TAL has signed a partnership arrangement with Qantas to offer a range of life insurance products to the airline’s frequent flyers who will be offered discounts based on their body mass index (BMI).
Qantas will offer life, TPD, critical illness and income protection under its Qantas Assure brand, which also offers travel and health insurance and a wellness program, and will offer a 10% discount on Life Insurance premiums if a Frequent Flyer member is within the Heart Foundation Healthy BMI range.
The airline will also offer 10,000 frequent flyers points for people who sign up to one product and 30,000 points for those who take up two or more products while also offering 1 point for per $1 value of the premium paid.
TAL Group CEO and Managing Director, Brett Clark said the partnership was part of TAL’s push to innovate and it had invested in a new technology platform and product to deliver the service to Qantas customers.
“The product and platform, combined with the rewards and wellness program, makes this an exciting innovation in the life insurance sector,” Clark said.
“Life insurance, health insurance and wellness are all inherently linked so this new partnership is a natural progression in the Qantas Assure offer.”
Some years ago, it was strictly prohibited for advisers to offer any form of incentive to encourage the purchase of Life Insurance products. Advisers were prohibited to advertise or promote same that could be construed as influencing the consumers decision to purchase Life Insurance other than for the specific purpose required and suitable to their objectives or needs.
It was obviously designed to stop the purchase of a financial product simply because there was a reward or gift for doing so.
This process now seems to be open slather, with every general and Life Insurer able to offer anything as either an unrelated or related incentive to purchase insurance product.
It can only now be assumed that advisers would not be restricted or put at a commercial disadvantage by being unable to offer incentives for consumers to purchase Life Insurance products?
Or is this just another clear example of the direct insurance model operating under a
“no advice” basis and therefore able to offer anything at all as a carrot to purchase a product the consumer may not understand and not need, because they may receive a free flight to see granny or a discount on a toaster or gym membership ?
This is a clear example of Life Insurance becoming a commodity product that can be marketed as an impulse purchase.
It appears that as this offer will be promoted through the Qantas Assure brand, advisers will be unable to offer the same incentives to their advised clients, thereby creating a competitive disadvantage to one distribution chain versus another.
Makes you sick in the guts !
Where are the steak knives ?
But wait, there will be more of this rubbish !!!
Yet another junk insurance product designed to be “easy to sign up”, and containing lots of exclusions in the fine print which the client won’t realise the implications of until their claim is rejected. (Implications that a professional adviser didn’t point out to them beforehand because govt regulation has made professional advice too complex and expensive for most consumers).
This is the sort of thing consumer groups and the government should be up in arms about. Yet their sole focus is on making it harder for people to get access to good quality underwritten insurance products. They are effectively pushing more people into junk insurance. We all know that both Liberal & Labor politicians are driven by their conflicts of interest when it comes to financial product regulation. But CHOICE and CALC should hang their heads in shame for the consumer harm they are causing.
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