The life insurance advice sector appears to be showing signs of recovery in retail risk new business, according to the latest Advice Landscape – Life Insurance Edition study by Adviser Ratings.
Its data shows the industry saw modest growth last year, with $315m in new business written, a 7% increase on the 2023 year. The firm’s estimated new business for 2025 is put at $340m.
Adviser Ratings also forecasts retail risk new business will pass $500m annually by 2030, thanks in part to technology efficiencies. Still, it has a long way to go to reach the 2018 peak of $568m.
The study, based on responses from 1,200 advisers and 500 practice heads, also reveals a shift in adviser sentiment with regard their future in the industry.
A record 90% of advisers now report being ‘certain’ they will remain in working in the sector, a figure that’s up from the 74% recorded in 2021. The remaining 10% could be those with an eye on 1 January 2026, and retirement.
Advisers are increasingly specialising by profession according to survey results, tailoring risk advice to clients in industries such as mining, healthcare, and farming.
Of Australia’s 6,077 advice practices, 720 plan to increase their focus on risk insurance. Practice margins are nudging 25%.
The full survey report is to be published 8 July.
I wonder how the "720 focusing on risk advice" mentioned in the recent poll on these pages plan on paying themselves only about half what their time is worth, given the insultingly low commissions offered to them by the insurers? This is on top of the unnecessary time-wasting compliance and red tape that STILL exists to a large extent around this essential service and the nice little 'come-an-get-it' sting that it can all be whipped back off them without notice, even AFTER it has been expended, for a full two years due to no fault of the adviser?
How does a decades+ experienced adviser training a newbie, properly, justify writing risk against this pathetic financial background background? How does the newbie starting his new risk advice business justify it? We all know by now they can't charge fees for risk advice alone, certainly not in the current climate of patently unjustifiably high yearly moonshot premium increases, fake quickly disappearing 1st year discounts and hollowed-out/stripped-down fake IP policies.
Answer is that neither of them can justify writing it in 2025/26+ – simple as that and the life company bonus-chasing execs of years past and current should be ashamed for helping create this situation by cutting commissions to insulting levels, fake switching/rewriting 'witch-hunts'++ and sitting on their hands when they had a chance to be the REAL change and chance to save it. Whoops! Too late.
There won't be 67 good effective specialist riskies left by Dec'26 let alone 670. Too sad for words but the life execs got what they thought they wanted when they ignored the best advice we gave them through the whole sorry mess.
That advice was in essence 3 things;
~ Contain premiums,
~ commensurate 'Reward-For-Effort'
~ lastly 'quality products not hollowed out policy definitions'.
It was all far too simple, really. The dummies couldn't even do that. We told them exactly what would happen if they did not do those things and guess what – it has happened. Oh well, it was good while it lasted I suppose. Enjoy your retirement fellow riskies!
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