{"id":30827,"date":"2015-09-07T15:18:13","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T05:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=30827"},"modified":"2025-09-03T15:17:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T05:17:20","slug":"risk-premium-increases-questioned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2015\/09\/07\/risk-premium-increases-questioned\/","title":{"rendered":"Risk Premium Increases Questioned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lifeinsurancedirect.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Life Insurance Direct<\/a> Founder, <strong>Russell Cain<\/strong>, has highlighted the nature of recent life insurance premium increases, questioning whether they may represent price gouging.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In a release that positions the question of possible price gouging within the context of the current Life Insurance Framework debate, Mr Cain notes that five recent premium increase letters his business has received come at a time when he says insurers are also campaigning to slash commissions paid to advisers.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; indicators from insurers are that prices will continue to rise<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cLogically, lower commissions should mean cheaper premiums for consumers, not more expensive ones,\u201d Mr Cain said, continuing, \u201cHowever, indicators from insurers are that prices will continue to rise. This leads us to question whether life insurers are price-gouging.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cain says lower commissions and premium price rises will not serve the interests of the consumer \u00a0\u201c&#8230;together, all this does is improve the insurer\u2019s bottom line&#8221;.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_29998\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29998\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2015\/06\/Russel-Cain.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29998\" src=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2015\/06\/Russel-Cain.jpg\" alt=\"Life Insurance Direct Founder and CEO, Russell Cain\" width=\"150\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-29998\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Life Insurance Direct Founder and CEO, Russell Cain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s certainly not in the best interests of consumers and neither does it help maintain the sustainability of the thousands of small financial advice businesses who provide the real human connection that clients and claimants so desperately need,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cain, who also expressed his concern for the future of many advice practices within the sector and the ramifications this may have\u00a0\u201c&#8230;fewer advisers will translate to fewer life insurance options for consumers which can only increase Australia\u2019s billion-dollar underinsurance problem&#8230;&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Surely any changes as wide reaching as the ones proposed should help prices go down and make life insurance for the consumer \u2013 who isn\u2019t paid a life insurance or bank executive\u2019s salary \u2013 more affordable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Life Insurance Direct Founder, Russell Cain, has highlighted the nature of recent life insurance premium increases, questioning whether they may represent price gouging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4,270],"tags":[4247],"class_list":["post-30827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-compliance-regulation","category-products","category-remuneration","tag-feature","headers-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}