Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori - Māori Language Week

In light of Māori Language week, which runs from 16th to 23rd September this year, we’d like to give a shout out to Accuro for including this gem in their SmartCare and SmartCare+ policy document.

“whāngai means a child from your extended whānau who you raise or bring up within your family and who has been accepted as a participant in the member’s plan. A whāngai is considered a dependant under this policy.”

We spotted this when reviewing their updated policy document that launched at the start of this month, the term is used in sections on dependents, well done to Accuro for bringing te reo Māori into the spotlight and acknowledging our country’s unique history. 

Basic te reo you could try to use today:

‘Kia ora’ is a greeting as well as a general expression of appreciation. In Māori, ‘tēnā koe’ is a formal greeting to one person, ‘tēnā kōrua’ is a formal greeting to two people, and ‘tēnā koutou’ is a formal greeting to many.

If you’re interested in learning more about Māori Language week, National Today does a great job of breaking it down, click here to read the full article.

Quality Product Research: Research Advisory Board – Central

We recently held our first Research Advisory Board meeting of the year with our Central Representatives and as usual received a lot of feedback to bring back to our team.

Independent Chair: Tony Dench

Insurer Observers: Amanda Harlen (Asteron Life), Helena Harbrow (Partners Life)

Board members: Samuel Rees-Thomas, Louise Grinstead, Joshua Logan (stepping down)

QPR Representatives: Russell Hutchinson, Doreen Dutt

The research advisory board reviewed the following topics:

·        Research report design, specifically a revamp of our Summary and Detailed Head-to-Head report to provide more details

·        Allowing for more flexibility in how advisers can present reports.

·        A review of our current trauma buyback options, we propose including an additional button, Buyback + Instant Buyback under the trauma Advanced Options and once selected, the best of the two scores will be quoted and displayed in the research.  

·        The proposed rating for non-PHARMAC, recently we created an infographic comparing non-PHARMAC medicines between providers and we will use this to revise the rating for this benefit within medical.

The feedback from our Research Advisory Board meetings has overall been very valuable to our research team and allows us to strengthen our research ratings when we gain an insight into the adviser perspective.

Since the meeting we have the news that Josh Logan is stepping aside from the role for the time being, we thank Josh for his service and look forward to inviting him back at some point in the future.

If you’re interested in providing feedback on any of the topics above, please reach out to our research team on info@quotemonster.co.nz or join us for our research deep dive scheduled for Thursday, 19 September 2024 11:30 am-12:30 pm.

We look forward to visiting our Southern team later this year.  

For more information on our Research Advisory board please click here.

Upcoming training sessions

We are hosting online training sessions on Researchmonster and Advicemonster on a regular basis and invite you and your team to join us if you’re interested in learning more about these new features.

Our next sessions will be: 

• Introduction to Quotemonster – Monday, 16 September 2024 11:00 am-12:00 pm

In this session, we will demonstrate the basic functions of our website, along with some handy tips and tricks along the way.

• Demystifying Advicemonster - Monday, 16 September 2024 2:00 pm-3:00 pm

In this session Aneel Ravji, our AdviceTech Lead, will demonstrate how to use our needs analysis and statement of advice (SOA) tools.

• Business Risk Research and SOAs with Quotemonster – Tuesday, 17 September 2024 10:00 am-10:45 am

In this session, Aneel will demonstrate how to use our business risk pricing, research, and SOA functionality.

• Checkmonster Demonstration - Tuesday, 17 September 2024 10:45 am-11:00 am

In this short session, Aneel will demonstrate how to use our newly released Checkmonster feature.

• Research Deep Dive - Thursday, 19 September 2024 11:30 am-12:30 pm

Join our research team for a research deep dive meeting, subjects for the coming session are:

• the challenges of comparison,

• results of our research advisory board meeting consultation on non-Pharmac medicines coverage ratings,

• new head-to-head report designs, and

• the forthcoming IP research review.

If you would like to join either of these sessions, please email your request to info@quotemonster.co.nz

Happy Crunching!

Website upgrades: what you need to know

Our IT Development team have been working hard to improve the services that we offer our advisers as well as improving user experience.

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 – QUOTE ENGINE V.3.0 B1 | QPR V.16.0| WEB V.4.6.1

Here are the changes that we’ve made:

Researchmonster updates:

The Compare Premium chart now shows the total premium and adjusts when you click the colour key to remove a benefit. If you do decide to remove a benefit entirely, don’t forget to head back to the benefit details, unselect and re-crunch to reflect this in your PDF research report.

The Blog feature will now take you to www.chatswood.co.nz, Chatswood serves the life and health insurance sector in New Zealand with market intelligence, data, and bespoke consulting services in conjunction with Quality Product Research Limited – a subsidiary that brings you Quotemonster.

Serious Trauma research is live on our normal quote flow and Standalone Head to Head, this  includes Asteron Life’s Major Trauma, Partner’s Life Serious Trauma and AIA’s Progressive Care.

To quote this, simply select Accelerated or Standalone Trauma and click the Severe Trauma tickbox, you will need to split the amount between standard and severe to generate a quote for all three insurers.

If you’re interested in severe (and not standard) a handy tip is to enter in $1 to standard then the full amount for severe, however Asteron Life will drop off as they require a minimum sum insured of $5,000 for their standard trauma cover.

By splitting the cover amount, you can generate a quote that contains both AIAs’ Critical Conditions Cover and Progressive Care.

To get a comparison for AIA, ensure that your default trauma product is Critical Conditions, then when severe is selected, the comparison generated is split between Critical Conditions and Progressive Care.

This method does need more work in future and any feedback that you have can help us during the next stage of development, so please reach out to us with your thoughts.  

Advicemonster updates:

A highly requested feature is now available for Advicemonster users, in our Business Insurance feature, users now have the ability to search for a company and pull through information from the New Zealand Business Register, this will be displayed in the Business Details section (further edits can be made) then shown in your Statement of Advice (SoA).

The following options are now available for quoting and research in Business Insurance:

-        Business Events Increase Option

-        Partial Disablement 

Training sessions:

We are hosting online training sessions on Researchmonster and Advicemonster on a regular basis and invite you and your team to join us if you’re interested in learning more about these new features.

Our next sessions will be: 

Introduction to Quotemonster – Monday, 16 September 2024 11:00 am-12:00 pm

In this session, we will demonstrate the basic functions of our website, along with some handy tips and tricks along the way.

Demystifying Advicemonster - Monday, 16 September 2024 2:00 pm-3:00 pm

In this session Aneel Ravji, our AdviceTech Lead, will demonstrate how to use our needs analysis and statement of advice (SOA) tools.

Business Risk Research and SOAs with Quotemonster – Tuesday, 17 September 2024 10:00 am-10:45 am

In this session, Aneel will demonstrate how to use our business risk pricing, research, and SOA functionality.

Checkmonster Demonstration - Tuesday, 17 September 2024 10:45 am-11:00 am

In this short session, Aneel will demonstrate how to use our newly released Checkmonster feature.

Research Deep Dive - Thursday, 19 September 2024 11:30 am-12:30 pm

Join our research team for a research deep dive meeting, subjects for the coming session are:

• the challenges of comparison,

• results of our research advisory board meeting consultation on non-Pharmac medicines coverage ratings,

• new head-to-head report designs, and

• the forthcoming IP research review.

If you would like to join either of these sessions, please email your request to info@quotemonster.co.nz

Happy Crunching!

Quotemonster Online Roadshow

If you missed us in person, please join us online as we show our cutting-edge insights and tools designed to enhance your business practices.

What’s in it for you?

Access new research: Check out 200+ updated products researched including: the latest business insurance research, group health insurance research, and legacy products

Stay safe with new Regtech: Discover how Checkmonster, Premium History Reports, and Company Reports can keep SOAs compliant

Expanded offer: Explore how to tackle new opportunities with business insurance SOAs and details on staying compliant while advising on existing business

What’s coming: We’re kiwi-owned and kiwi-based so it’s only natural we branch out and give you a sneak peek at Kiwimonster.

Click here to register: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/f8dbd586-d563-4cc0-aadd-d17e9aebcdc1@2f1f15f2-0d74-4eba-9c8c-31bd5701c8d2

We look forward to seeing you there!

Recent rate changes on Quotemonster

Dear Quotemonster users,

We are pleased to confirm that the following rate changes are live on Quotemonster effective 1 September 2024.

• Southern Cross Wellbeing One and Two (no changes were made to the GP and Prescriptions or Dental and Optical Options)

• Accuro SmartCare and SmartCare+

If you have any questions or comments on these changes please reach out to us on info@quotemonster.co.nz

Happy Crunching!

Quotemonster Information Security Bulletin – Site SSL Certificate Chain Update

This is our ninth information security bulletin, about a recent update to a Certificate Authority (CA) that we use on www.quotemonster.co.nz.

One of the certificate authorities, Let’s Encrypt, who we use on Quotemonster has announced a series of changes in its chain of trust over the coming weeks. Realistically, this will only affect some of the older devices, users of Android 7.0 or earlier. As of December 2022, only 4% of devices ran on Android 7.0 or earlier, this is likely to have reduced even more over the last few years, so we are confident that most of our users will not experience any disruptions when trying to access Quotemonster via a mobile device. However, some may still use these devices, and an easy way to resolve any error messages that you receive regarding Trusted Settings is to install and use Firefox Mobile.

Please click here to download Firefox for Android.

We appreciate your understanding and support, both now and in the years to come as we provide safe and secure communication to everyone who uses Quotemonster.

Want to know more?

We are here to help! You can email us to ask for copies of past security bulletins. You can also review our outsource provider statement at the bottom right-hand corner of every page on the site at www.quotemonster.co.nz. More information about relevant certifications, policies, and procedures will be shared in future information security bulletins. We recommend you keep these with other compliance documents.

Please contact us on 09 480 6071 or at info@quotemonster.co.nz if you have any concerns or questions.

ISB 09-202409

Research and website upgrades: what you need to know

QPR Database V16 has been 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 – QUOTE ENGINE V.3.0 B1 | QPR V.16.0 | WEB V4.6.0

Our latest updates to Researchmonster include:

– Research for the following insurers are now available to include in your comparison:

o   OneChoice:

·        Life, Trauma (Accelerated), and TPD (Any Occupation Accelerated)

o   Booster

·        Super Simple Life

o   Chubb Life & Living (replaces LifeOne in the main quote flow, however, can still be accessed via Standalone Head to Head)

·        Life, and Trauma (Standalone)

o   NZ Seniors

·        Term Life

o   Greenwich

·        QuickCover Life

These changes have led to an update of our Product Map, click here to download the most recent version.

– Policy document update for Unimed Hospital Select effective 1 August 2024.

o   Rating changes applied to:

·        Loyalty Benefits, Non-Surgical Benefits, Child Features, and Exclusions

– Policy document updates for:

·        AA Health

·        AA Life

·        ANZ Life & Living

·        SBS (Term Life)

– Reviews:

o   Based on adviser feedback, we have recently updated the Extras and Options on Income and Mortgage selections on Quotemonster:

·        Fidelity Life’s Extras package now includes Specified Medical Conditions, Specific Injury Benefit, Death Benefit, and TPD 

·        Partners Life Options package now includes Injury Benefit, and Trauma Benefit

o   Trauma remediation: sub-items in Paralysis, amount score in Financial Planning & Legal Advice

o   Medical remediation: sub-item in Physiotherapy (Accuro)

Recent Pricing Updates

We are now quoting the latest Unimed medical rates effective 1 August.

Standalone Head to Head is a powerful tool subscribers can use to:

–        Compare legacy products for replacement business

–        Compare products from the same provider; e.g., AIA Critical Conditions vs Progressive Care

–        Compare different product sets; e.g., Severe Trauma vs Comprehensive Trauma

–        Quick head to head research comparisons

Please note this feature is still in Beta version so please reach out to us if you have any feedback that you would like us to consider in our next round of development.

Business Insurance is a powerful tool Advicemonster subscribers can use to quote, research, and run a needs analysis on for Life, Trauma, TPD and Key Person. We highly recommend joining us for our next online training session to learn more about the service, and as a thank you for attending we can offer a 14-day trial on your account for new users.

Upcoming training sessions:

– Introduction to Quotemonster

Quotemonster training session where we demonstrate the basic functions of our website, along with some handy tips and tricks along the way.

Friday, 30 August 2024 9:30 am-10:30 am

– Demystifying Advicemonster

Advicemonster training session where we demonstrate how to use our needs analysis and statement of advice (SOA) tools.

Friday, 30 August 2024 10:30 am-11:30 am

– Business Risk Research and SOAs with Quotemonster

Business risk pricing, research, and SOA demonstration.

Friday, 30 August 2024 12:00 pm-12:45 pm

– Research Deep Dive

Join our research team as we meet up online and have a discussion on a specific research topic.

If you have any questions or are interested in attending one of the above-mentioned sessions, please send us a request on info@quotemonster.co.nz 

Happy Crunching!

Quotemonster at FSC24: Professional Advice Leaders Lunch

We are delighted to sponsor the Professional Advice Lunch session at the Financial Services Council New Zealand for the seventh year in a row.

By invitation only: Professional Advice Leaders Lunch facilitated by our Director, Russell Hutchinson which includes a highly informative panel discussion with leaders from the life and health insurance sectors debating the future of genetics and insurance in New Zealand.

This session will be held on Wednesday 4 September, click here to view the full programme.

Quotemonster at FSC24: Consumer Resilience & Prosperity Conference

We're excited to share that we're one of the Gold sponsors at the upcoming FSC24: Consumer Resilience & Prosperity Conference from 3 - 5 September, which brings together the financial services sector and beyond.

Come find our team in the exhibition area for a coffee or chat, we can't wait to see you there.

To learn more about FSC24, click here.