Research updates: what you need to know!

QPR Database V15.2A released

Our Research team have made some monstrously good updates to the QPR database recently. If you’ve noticed we’re running a bit slower than usual, please refresh your page and scroll down to ensure that you’re on our latest version – QPR V.15.2A | WEB V4.3.9.

Our latest updates include:

• Cigna rebrand to Chubb Life – this has been live on Quotemonster since the brands launch in March, however all rebranded documents can now be accessed by database subscribers.

• Kiwibank rebrand to nib effective 1 June 2023 – more information on this here.

• MAS - policy document update for Life & Income Protection effective 1 December 2021, with product rating changes in Income Protection (indemnity) – rating applied in Vocational and Rehabilitation Support .

• Research for Partners Life Immediate Trauma Buyback and Asteron Life’s Continuous Trauma is available when Instant Trauma Buyback is selected.

• ANZ – policy document update for Life & Living effective 6 March 2023, however, this has not affected product ratings.

Other Research remediations include:   

• Medical: Exclusions

• Income Protection: Insurable Income and Inflation Adjustment

• Trauma: Heart Attack

• TPD: Benefit Definition over 65

If you have any questions regarding these please feel free to email us on info@quotemonster.co.nz 

Happy Crunching!

Quality Product Research: Major Review of Trauma Incidence

According to the FSC, in 2020, a total of $113,700,000 trauma claims were paid out in New Zealand, accounting for 20% of risk claims paid out at the time. Quality Product Research (QPR) uses reinsurer claims information to weight our scoring according to the most important items. For example, 80-90% of our trauma weighting is given to high claiming conditions and the remaining is evenly distributed between minor conditions.

Our incidence factor aims to reflect how likely a benefit will be claimed and is vital within trauma, currently females have an incidence of 69.17% for cancer, while this number is 43.46% in males. Failing to consider this factor would affect the value of certain benefits - we aim to have the incidence rate in our model closely track actual claims to provide a real value-based approach to rating.

Our four-factor research considers four features in our overall score:

Definition x Incidence x Amount x Frequency = Insurance Quality Score

For more information on our methodology please click here. 

Based on the most recent claims data from Gen Re, we have reviewed our Trauma Incidence Scores and openly welcome your feedback on these. Please find attached:

1. A comparison of current and proposed trauma incidence – click here to view (excel file). 

2. A trauma incidence infographic – click here to view (pdf). 

Your feedback

We value getting your feedback on how these wordings are being applied to claims you may be aware of. Please email us with details of any recent claims to assist with our ratings.

Doreen Dutt, Quality Product Research Limited, researcher@qpresearch.co.nz

Quality Product Research: FAQ – can research ratings be altered?

We hope this explanation can provide more clarity on how our research works.   

Our objective is to be a tool for advisers to highlight the material differences between products, rather than a view of ranking them from best to worse, therefore, advisers are able to select their product and provider basket to what they are qualified to advise on (i.e., they can remove providers and alter products where required). However, in reality, price is also a significant factor during the advice process and both our pricing comparison and research rating are used by advisers to justify why a selection is being made - along with other information and views you may have, of course.

For example, ideally an adviser will select all agreed value base products under non-taxable (agreed value).

In this set, Partners Life may have a research rating advantage, but pricing disadvantage, assuming current settings.

If an adviser then decides they want to remove Partners, for whatever reason (perhaps they have no accreditation with them), this removes Partners Life from being shown in the premium comparison however, it would be inaccurate to then bump AIA to 100% because in this specific set Partners Life still has the highest score.   

When it comes to Options and Extras packages, in an ideal world, an adviser would select the best products in the set to compare and again will have to consider the pricing comparison and research rating as a package.

Fidelity has a pricing advantage (cheapest in this set) and a research advantage in this example below.

However, removing Fidelity will remove the provider from appearing in the premium comparison, but it will not alter the research comparison – they still have the highest rating in the set and the other companies are benchmarked against this.

We believe it would be inaccurate if advisers were allowed to remove a company to then alter research ratings. They can, however, alter products but have to be able to justify it from a pricing and rating perspective.

We hope this provides some insight into how research ratings work and if there is a specific topic you would like us to share on, please send us an email on info@quotemonster.co.nz

Quality Product Research: Research Ratings Terminology

If you’ve ever seen the terms Total Benefits Score or Total Weighted IQ Rating on Quotemonster and wondered what they meant, you’re not the only one!

Here is some information on numbers and terminology which we hope will provide you with a better understanding of our Research.

For a product (e.g., Life Cover), the Total Benefits Score (Image 1) is the sum total of every benefit being rated. You can view the entire list of benefits by ordering your Research Alphabetically.

Image 1:

The Percentage Rating (Image 1) converts to a Star rating for each insurer’s products and is also provided in this screen.

In the example above (Image 1), the highest total benefits score is 106.44, which belongs to AIA, therefore this company has a Percentage Rating of 100% and is a 5-star product. Next, the other products are benchmarked against this as below:

• Chubb Life: 104.76/106.44 = 98.4% rounds to 98%

• Fidelity: 104.50/106.44 = 98.2% rounds to 98%

• Partners Life: 106.02/106.44 = 99.8%, rounds to 100%

The Percentage Rating is then converted into a Star Rating according to our table below:   

When ordering by Importance, we aim to only present the high scoring benefits for the selected product, and all others are combined and displayed in the Secondary Benefits Score (Image 2).

Again, to see every benefit, simply order Alphabetically.  

Image 2:

Researchmonster subscribers have the additional Research tab, which defaults to the Package Score and includes the term Total Weighted IQ Rating.

IQ = Insurance Quality and we highly recommend referring to our Why Methodology Matters infographic for detailed information and you can click here to download this. 

To get the Total Weighted IQ Rating, the Total Benefits Score for each product is multiplied by the Product Line Weighting Factor*

*In reality, the distribution of claims differs based on age, gender, and other factors. Our Product Line Weighting Factor aims to model the relative weight of a claim and as we know, models aren’t an exact science.

In our example below (Image 3), Chubb Life: 104.76 (Total Benefits Score) x 0.1 (Product Line Weighting Factor) = 10.48 (package score for Life cover).

This is completed for each benefit and totalled to form the Total Weighted IQ Rating (Image 3).

Life 10.48 +  Trauma 31.85 + Health 10.42 + Mortgage 14.37 + TPD 14.97 + Income 19.21 = 101.30

Star ratings (aka Percentage Rating) for the package is also provided in this screen.

In this set, the highest score is 102.85, which belongs to Partners Life, therefore this company has a Percentage Rating of 100% and offers a 5-star package suite. Next, the other products are benchmarked against this as below:

AIA: 101.66/102.85 = 99%, Chubb Life: 101.30/102.85 = 98%, Fidelity: 100.01/102.85 = 97%

Image 3:

We hope this provides some insight into how research works and if there is a specific topic you would like us to share on, please send us an email on info@quotemonster.co.nz

Quality product research database upgrade

We have just uploaded QPR Database version 152 and 152a into our Dropbox folder.
This version of the database includes the following changes:

Changes made in 15.2a:

* ANZ - new policy document effective 06/03/2022

> no rating changes applied

*Revisions made to Medical Amount Scores in V15.2 for:

> Fertility benefit

> Non-surgical benefit

> Oral surgergy benefit

> Overseas treatment

> Physiotherapy

> Pregnancy

> Treatment in Australia

> Surgical benefit

> Recovery benefit

> Minor surgery benefit

Changes made in 15.2:

* Correction made to version summary log (V15.1 released 31-Jan-23) - note should read: 

> FSR for PL/BNZ life update from A- to A

* Cigna rebrand to Chubb Life effective 06/03/2023 - no rating changes applied

* Kiwibank rebrand to nib effective 01/06/2023

* MAS - new policy document update for Life & IP effective 01/12/2021

* Business rating for AIA, Asteron, Fidelity, Chubb & Partners: 

> TPD

* Specific Injury rating for AIA, Asteron, Chubb & Partners

> Package weighting updated to reflect the addition of SI

* Reviews:

> Medical:

* Exclusions updated for NIB, SX and PL

> IP:

* Insurable Income - rating added for Westpac

* Inflation Adjustment - rating removed for ANZ

> Trauma:

* Instant Buyback for PL Immediate Trauma and Asteron Continuous Trauma

* Heart attack sub item remediation for nib

> TPD:

* Benefit Definition over 65

For advisers the best way to explore the changes is to produce a research report on quotemonster. For product managers please refer to the change logs on the revised database that has been sent to you. For more information please contact one of the research staff.