Its executive team held a webinar for advice businesses on Tuesday.
Newly appointed chief operations officer Debbie Eyre told attendees that last year, its service levels were not where it would have liked them to be.
“Certainly the feedback I understand came back from advisers was that that was the case – that was about volume, both from a claims perspective… but also from a new business volumes as well.
“Automation is critical for us to actually cope with the scale, to actually cope with the volumes coming through the door.”
She said she was “absolutely delighted” the team had worked over the holidays to rectify the problems.
Partners Life is introducing an end-to-end review of claims which will involve a third-party to offer “fresh eyes” on its processes, advisers were told. It would also look at the friction points to help speed up its decision-making.
The insurer was also looking at the underwriting rules engine and e-app to improve processing rates and turnaround times.
Partners Life planned to go totally paperless within the first half of this year as part of its efficiency improvements and was working on a change to the e-consent process.
“Basically it will disappear, which is good, and which again will take away the pain points because a lot of the applications are coming through with no e-consent form, which just delays things,” Eyre said.
Advisers asked why when increasing cover for existing clients, they had to give a full claims history when it should be in the system already.
Eyre acknowledged it was a friction point and said Partners Life was focused on making the process simple.
“We do want to connect into and look at previous disclosures as part of our process. So that should also come out as part of our review. I'm not over the details of the systems yet or the way we're doing that, but I absolutely understand why you would not want to do that and why we should be able to rely on previous disclosures.”
Advisers also asked whether the non-disclosure issues that were blamed for underwriting hold-ups had been addressed.
Eyre said the insurer knew there were improvements that could be made to get better disclosure processes in place and a review was underway of underwriting and e-app questions.
“I don't have a date for delivery but … it lines up quite nicely with our company's regulation changes where you know we the questions we ask must be relevant but also must draw out the disclosures that we need.”
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