[Opinion] Life advisers need a mindset change: away from ‘we sell’ to ‘we advise’.

Well said Steve. The reality of this shift in approach does result in two things. A slowing down of the process, as clients do stop and read what they are provided to both learn and understand. The resulting coverage is distinctly easier to manage, with clients buying into their coverage; they take ownership. Meaning they make substantially more effort to maintain it, keep up with premiums, and claims go significantly better. (i.e. less non-disclosure and cleaner claims processes) Yes, you will have clients that opt out because they see it as too onerous. TBH if you don’t have a good workign relationship with them at the advice stage, the claims part is goign to be a dogs breakfast. I’ve found these clients are typically the ones that are non-disclosing and they become the complaints we hear about thie industry. Simple and easy life insurance is not! As the journo from Consumer I talked to about medical insurance over the last couple of weeks has realised, this stuff is not nearly as simple as most think it is. The message I got back was because of this, clients need to be looking for a qualified comptenent adviser to review what they are doing to ensure they have the best answers for them. (Mostly structure than moving providers) I think finally with FSLAA we might be seeing a shift with external media understanding our area isn’t that simple, fingers cross that’s what gets published :D

Sell the concept first, the rest will fall into place. Quote "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough".

@WK, lawyers probably don't need to sel,l and advice is all they have. Advisers need to sell, advise and explain things simply. Insurance is the most unsort good you could market, don't sell it and see how you go. Overcook the hangi on advice and you will just create, leave it with me I will think about it! I am over articles on egg sucking and more advice on this is what you should do to spray round up on the sale. How about this, articles that read, This is how you can have a successful practice and grow revenue. How to get rid of unnecessary barriers imposed by regulators and assist clients. As far as any journo from consumer magazine I wouldn't bother with them. They should stick to toasters and cell phones.

We used to talk about sales masquerading as advice. Especially when looking down on QFE advisers from an elevated saddle. Ironic now how often it turns out that the people who have advice for advisers are indeed selling something.

@Backstage Well said. No more articles please on how to suck eggs. This is all starting to feel like a never-ending lecture from a school headmaster before last period. The amount of “decision paralysis” coming from some of these articles is just making the process of an adviser helping their client secure cover unnecessarily complicated when it doesn’t need to be. Overregulation has compounded the problem of underinsurance in New Zealand. Please. Let’s not add anymore obstacles now for advisers and clients to navigate when arranging and securing cover.

@Amused, or it might be that the adviser's behaviour and commentary highlight a continued need for the message... The FMA's recent publication showed advisers recorded 43,598 complaints in the last reporting year, with 97% resolved in 3 months. The escalation of complaints to DRS services was 514, and 85 (17%) of these were upheld by the DRS. I don't have the specialty breakdown, but this suggests advisers need to keep working at things. By the way, 17% upheld is a great figure; it means that despite consumer views, the majority of advisers are doing the right things. The majority of DRS complaints were for things largely out of advisers' control: pricing and premiums, service issues, and admin issues. Advisers will have their own admin and service issues, but most are forced errors due to poor provider service levels. Conduct issues with advice and competency were 37 of those DRS complaints. You could argue that this isn't a significant issue, and I would agree. At the same time, we haven't yet seen the FMA take on things we're all a little unsure of, such as where the lines on the field are painted. Meaning we can't get complacent about continued development and improvement either.

How about this perspective: 85 complaints out of 43,598 that were recorded were shown to be "fault" by advisers. That is 0.19% Stop blathering about conduct issues. Morgan Freeman famously said "racism would die of its own accord if people stopped talking about it"...and there is some merit in that. A thing becomes an issue as long as people keep making an issue of it. The numbers in the case suggest we don't actually have an industry wide conduct issue. Perhaps the focus should shift to the 98.8% of complaints that it would seem advisers are recording and resolving, largely on behalf of some other party's screw up I'd suggest.

I don’t think it’s sensible to hide from the fact that the bar for acceptable life insurance advice has changed and is not obvious under the new law and Code. So, I’ll continue to talk about advice conduct issues to any adviser or FAP director who takes their responsibilities and business seriously and, who wants to investigate the issues sufficiently to be able to make informed decisions about the level of risk and potential liability they are prepared to take.

@Tony, while the math is correct, we don't know if they were resolved satisfactorily from the client's perspective. I'm not looking for issues here; it's more that we don't have confidence in the information as it is self-reported without third-party verification. The 17% upheld by DRS is a more mathematically sound statistic. I'm not saying that 17% of 43k is a reasonable expectation on adviser issues either; drawing a conclusion that there isn't an issue with self-reported data is the flaw. My experience with complaints at the adviser level has often come from clients who have not felt they have been listened to or had their problem resolved with their existing adviser (the reason why I'm now talking to them), with a high proportion quite justified. The two stats that are important here: 1. There is a clear increase in complaints being managed by advisers and they are dealing with them in terms of settling the issue and doing so in a timely way. 2. The significant increase in the number of complaints to DRS schemes that involve advisers and the uptick in the findings of the advisers being at fault. (I have argued that some decisions by the DRS' have been wrong, but not all of them by a long way.) Which says that at nearly 1 in 5 before a DRS aren't getting it right, that's where the discussion on approach and conduct is being driven from and while it feels like drone, we need to be paying attention to what's coming out so we can refine what we do appropriately.

@Tony, while the math is correct, we don't know if they were resolved satisfactorily from the client's perspective. I'm not looking for issues here; it's more that we don't have confidence in the information as it is self-reported without third-party verification. The 17% upheld by DRS is a more mathematically sound statistic. I'm not saying that 17% of 43k is a reasonable expectation on adviser issues either; drawing a conclusion that there isn't an issue with self-reported data is the flaw. My experience with complaints at the adviser level has often come from clients who have not felt they have been listened to or had their problem resolved with their existing adviser (the reason why I'm now talking to them), with a high proportion quite justified. The two stats that are important here: 1. There is a clear increase in complaints being managed by advisers and they are dealing with them in terms of settling the issue and doing so in a timely way. 2. The significant increase in the number of complaints to DRS schemes that involve advisers and the uptick in the findings of the advisers being at fault. (I have argued that some decisions by the DRS' have been wrong, but not all of them by a long way.) Which says that at nearly 1 in 5 before a DRS aren't getting it right, that's where the discussion on approach and conduct is being driven from and while it feels like drone, we need to be paying attention to what's coming out so we can refine what we do appropriately.