Chatswood serves the life and health insurance sector in New Zealand with market intelligence, data, and bespoke consulting services. Some of these are provided in conjunction with Quality Product Research Limited - a subsidiary that brings you Quotemonster.
We believe that good decisions are more likely to occur when we have good information about the market environment in which we operate. Intuitive leaps and creative decisions are always required, of course, but the more they are based on a firm foundation of observation, the better they tend to be.
Fidelity Life announce two key appointments
Leigh Bennett has been promoted internally to the role of Head of Underwriting. Leigh will be managing Fidelity Life’s 34-strong Underwriting team. She will be responsible in ensuring policy applications are assessed appropriately, making quality decisions and focused on achieving good customer and commercial outcomes. Most recently the Product Owner in the company’s digital team, Leigh has nine years’ experience in the life insurance sector.
Mat Bark has been appointed to the newly created role of Head of Channel Enablement. Mat is tasked with shaping Fidelity Life’s future adviser channel experience. This includes business ownership of new digital interfaces and platform innovation, modernising the legacy and in force servicing experience for advisers, and leading Fidelity Life’s Group insurance re-platform. Mat was previously Head of Existing Business at AIA.
Bronwyn Kirwan, Chief Sales and Service Officer at Fidelity Life says
“Following the delivery of some key transformation activities, we are now heavily focused on our distribution franchise and are delighted to announce the appointment of both Leigh and Mat in these critical leadership roles to help drive and enhance our engagement with advisers.”
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A report, Pharmac's Medicines Waiting Lists: Impacts on Patients in Aotearoa New Zealand, has claimed that Pharmac has an average waiting time of 7.7 years for applications across all Pharmac lists. The report was commissioned by Medicines New Zealand, a campaign group whose members are in the prescription medicines and vaccines industries.
Pharmac is the government agency that decides what medicines to fund and manages a fixed budget for those medicines. Pharmac need to decide which medicines to fund for the best health outcomes for New Zealanders – how improved people’s lives might be and for how long with the medicine; how much shorter or less healthy people’s lives would be without the medicine; and how a patient’s family will be affected by a funding decision.
Applications on the Options for Investment waiting list, which comprises applications that Pharmac have indicated they would like to fund, subject to budget, have been there for an average of 5.9 years. The report claims that the time taken to achieve funding decisions has increased in the last 2 years, with 39% of applications being funded within 20 months in 2020/21 compared to only 3% in 2021/22. One of the recommendations the report calls for is for Pharmac to establish a performance benchmark for the time taken to achieve funding decisions.
Some insurance companies offer access to Medsafe-approved, non-Pharmac funded medicines, like nib’s non-Pharmac Plus option.
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