Gannon was speaking to Good Returns in the wake of a story in the Sunday Star Times citing a ‘leaked’ email he sent to advisers which, the story claimed, suggested commissions influence insurance advice. 

“It wasn’t a leaked email, it was an email I sent out to the market, for a start, so not leaked,” he said.

“My email was quite clear saying to people there is a new insurance company [Partners Life] in the marketplace and its really, really important for the good of the industry, the good of agency agreements, the good of everybody that people do what’s right for their clients first and foremost, but you need to be responsible and you need to do what you can to maintain your retention rates.”

He said the point of the email – to safeguard persistency – “is not a new thing.”

“I’ve been in the business 27 years and the industry has always had persistency criteria in agency agreements, there is nothing new that I can see being brought into the market that hasn’t been around since day dot.”

In the email Gannon urged advisers to maintain their OnePath retention rates, saying “all advisers must spend time on the retention of business sold as this going forward will become more and more important, not only with OnePath but all carriers.”

Gannon said the message in the email was simple.

“Hang in there, work hard, keep your retention rates up there, it’s good for everybody, it’s good for the industry, don’t do anything silly in the short term to jeopardise that.”

He said he was disappointed that the story distracted from the success of a leads programme Newpark had undertaken this year.

“We’ve generated 8,000 brand new leads for advisers in the market this year, we thought that was a pretty positive story,” he said.

“That has transformed into our group being up 42% on written API for this year – that is massive," he says.