Ballantyne says one thing the government could do would be to make it mandatory for employers to tell employees what insurance products are designed to do.

She says there is a role for government to play in financial literacy and help people understand various products.

In the life insurance space this is something advisers do and they don 't get paid for it and it costs them in terms of time.

"The government should be talking to people and raising their financial literacy."

She says this has been done previously with KiwiSaver.

THE COST OF REVIEWS

Ballantyne says the work going into responding to documents like the Reserve Bank and Financial Markets Authority review into life insurance companies has been "hugely costly".

"We are doing this work to effectively prove we are not the bad guys. To prove that we are not Australia."

Ballantyne says there are very short time frames to do this work and they are responding to an audience which doesn't necessarily fully understand life insurance companies.

She is not sure they even know what good conduct should look like, rather the companies are required to tell them.

There is a fear each company is going to come back with different ideas and then the regulators will pick and choose pieces and ask for more submissions.

All this there is less time and resources available to run life companies and focus on the core requirement of paying claims.

COMMISSIONS

In this interview with GRTV Ballantyne also discusses commissions and says "there is no right answer".

Indeed changing to d different model such as more trials or a capped commission model may well have "unintended consequences". 

To download as an audio podcast, click here.

Also available on SoundCloud.

Full transcript available here.