Southern Cross Health's latest results are a guide to the health of New Zealand’s largest health insurer and provide points to growth in the health market and the expected claims situation for 2023 to 2024.

Many insurers are updating their policy documents and product brochures in an effort to meet a number of conflicting objectives, which could be summarised as: simplicity, accuracy and ease of operation.

In June last year we had one of our data science people, Ed Foster, take a look at life expectancy calculators. Life expectancy calculators can be useful tools for conversations about both life and health risks and investment risks.

In October last year we examined the Insurance Contracts Bill and its possible impacts on the application process for advisers – although it is largely benign for most of you as you tend to offer fully underwritten cover, this quarter we examine how it may affect certain disputes.

Russell Hutchinson identifies four areas in the proposed Insurance Law Contracts bill that may cause problems.

Russell Hutchinson and his team review life expectancy calculators and find there is an opportunity awaiting in this space.

A rare combination of factors probably means that 2023-24 will generate above trend levels of claims in several product categories.

In Australia there has been a large, ongoing, exodus from the financial services industry. So far, our regulation has brought nothing like the losses seen there. Here are some of the factors we took into account in revising our view – and why it matters.

While it is not hard to come up with a number, it is very difficult to come up with a reliable number.

If you have not yet read the draft Bill, or one of the summaries of it, we suggest you skip to the end of this article to find the useful links and work your way through at least the summary.

If you have not yet read the draft Bill, or one of the summaries of it, we suggest you skip to the end of this article to find the useful links and work your way through at least the summary.

Whatever methods you use for modelling for insurance requirements, and building your recommendations, one important raw material is good data. Remember if you say that something costs about $x or if interest rates are likely to be y%, then you need to be able to substantiate the use of that assumption.

An adviser I know has recently started working with an online agency which coaches them on how to build content and engage with potential customers better on existing online platforms.

A digital strategy is often seen translated as meaning ‘needs a CRM’ by those early in their technology journey. That is not necessarily true.

The difference between ‘fast insurance’ from ‘good insurance’ appears lost on some journalists who are happy, it seems, to tar all the with the same brush, damaging confidence in the insurance market.

Whatever methods you use for modelling for insurance requirements, one important raw material is good data. A lot of attention is paid to the data that must be collected from the client for the needs analysis.