Fidelity Life announce premium changes

Effective from 1 April 2025, Fidelity Life are re-rating the premiums for customers in the Adviser channel. Key aspects are below:

• A re-shaping of the pricing curve to reflect a lower risk due to the underwriting selection effect.

• A 5% increase to all lump sum premiums and disability premiums (where the benefit period is 2 or 5 years). And a 7.5% increase to all disability covers with a benefit period of ‘to age 65’ or ‘to age 70’ due to claims experience.

• An adjustment of the rates for all customers.

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AI becoming more trusted by executives

SAP investigated how US executives were using AI in their organisations and their trust in the technology. They found that AI has become embedded in work practices (with 63% of executives using generative AI daily) and is changing how people do business.

Decisions are being made based on AI insights, with 44% of C-suite executives saying they would override a decision they had already planned to make based on AI insights and another 38% trusting AI to make business decisions on their behalf. 74% of executives had more confidence in AI advice over advice from family and friends. And a massive 55% of executives say in their company AI-driven insights have replaced or bypassed traditional decision-making.

Some common tasks carried out by generative AI tools include:

• Analysing data and making recommendations for decision-making (52%)

• Spotting risk or issues they hadn't previously considered (48%)

• Offering alternate plans (47%)

• Enhancing product development (40%)

• Supporting budget planning (40%)

• Performing market research (40%)

SAP found that there were positive implications on employee wellbeing, with 39% of executives reporting better work-life balance, 38% reporting improved wellbeing and 31% reporting reduced stress.

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Product and pricing changes at Partners Life

Partners Life have announced a range of product changes, effective from 15 March 2025, aimed at giving customers more flexibility and the option to remove features if they don’t want to pay for them.

• The built-in Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) Benefit will become a TPD Option. If a client opts out of TPD, the premium for their monthly disability cover will reduce accordingly. This change applies to Mortgage Repayment Cover, Household Expenses Covers and Income Cover Agreed Value, Agreed Loss of Earnings and Indemnity Loss of Earnings.

• They have made changes to Trauma Cover and Moderate Trauma Cover for clients who have suffered an out of hospital cardiac arrest. They have removed obsolete medical requirements, and added current diagnostic tools used by medical staff to confirm a cardiac arrest has occurred. The wording has been updated to allow for new and future diagnostic tools.

• They have updated Trauma, Moderate Trauma and Severe Trauma Cover wordings to let clients know that Partners Life will notify them when they can exercise their Life Cover or Deferred Trauma Cover buy-back options.

Any beneficial enhancements to policy wordings are automatically applied to existing in-force policies under the Guaranteed Upgrade of Future Benefits feature.

In addition to the product changes, Partners Life have reviewed premiums, in light of increased volume and cost of medical claims. Premiums for Private Medical Cover including Specialists and Tests Option will increase by 18% and the policy fee will increase from $58.08 to $64.13 per annum, both from 22nd April 2025.

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FSC25 Conference: Transforming for Tomorrow is on 10 - 11 September in Auckland

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What’s the biggest health claim paid for a procedure?

The health insurance industry has been experiencing a time of rising medical costs, where both volume of claims and inflation have been increasing. We’ve taken a closer look at individual claims values that a few insurers have released recently. As you can see from the data below, the costs of individual claims can be astronomical.

nib regularly publish their top 5 health claims by month. RiskinfoNZ has an article collating historical nib’s top health claims by month here.

nib’s top health claims for January 2025

Treatment                     Cost              Gender              Age

Spinal surgery               $101,000         Male                   16

Cardiac surgery           $85,000           Male                   46

Cardiac surgery           $56,000           Male                   70

Cardiac surgery           $54,000           Female               70

Digestive surgery          $53,000          Male                   72

nib’s top health claims for December 2024

Treatment                      Cost                Gender               Age

Cardiac surgery            $103,000          Male                   72

Cancer surgery             $102,000          Male                   77

Cardiac surgery            $93,000            Male                   80

Cardiac surgery            $88,000            Male                   76

Spinal surgery                $87,000            Male                   48

But these do not top the charts of what we are currently aware. Southern Cross’s most expensive surgical claims were $256,165 for a spinal fusion procedure and $127,191 for a breast reconstruction.

While Partners Life don’t release a similar monthly overview of their top claims, their ‘The story behind our claims’ slideshow highlights their largest single payouts since 2011. The most expensive claims paid out were a whopping $1.6 million+ for Total and Permanent Disability or Income cover; $2.9million +for Life cover; $3.2million + for Trauma cover and $982,000+ for Private Medical Cover.

While the majority of claims won’t cost anywhere near as much, what used to be ample caps of some older medical values don’t seem so rosy in light of recent inflation and surging claims costs. Yet we haven’t seen any insurers coming out and indexing claims caps. We think that’s wrong, and we’ll offer a score boost to the first insurer who offers indexed caps.

What types of claims have you heard of and how did they go? We would love to hear more from you, especially if you are a Quotemonster subscriber, through our adviser claims experience tool (check the side menu when you are next logged in).

More news:

mySolutions webinar 'What got you here, won't get you there' 19 March

Chubb Life introduce Smart Start, Change of Mind and the ability to delete quotes

Chubb Life have announced the launch of their new “Smart Start” feature, a new “Change of Mind” window for cancellations and withdrawals and the ability to delete quotes in Adviser Hub.

The Smart Start feature will be rolled out from 13 – 20 February.  With “Smart Start”, once underwriting for an Assurance Extra or Assurance Extra Business policy has been completed at standard rates or an Offer of Terms has been accepted, Chubb Life’s systems will initiate a temporary pause period and advisers will receive a “Ready to Issue” email which outlines the planned commencement date, first payment date, payment frequency and premium amount. The default pause period is five working days, after which the policy will automatically issue, though advisers can adjust the pause period to anything from 0 – 5 days. During the pause period, advisers can request changes by replying to the email or calling the New Business team.

From 14 February, cancellation requests will be processed as soon as they’re received and the “Change of Mind” 14-day window will apply, whereby customers will be able to withdraw their cancellation request and retain their cover without going through underwriting again. If customers were to experience a claimable event, they’ll continue to be protected until the end of the change of mind window, or the effective date of the cancellation, whichever is the latest.

Advisers will be able to delete quotes from AdviserHub – individual quotes can be deleted from within the quote itself, or advisers can delete multiple quotes through a bulk delete function on the “retrieve quote” screen.

In other Chubb Life news, AM Best has reaffirmed Chubb Life Insurance New Zealand Limited's Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent) and Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of “a+” (excellent) with stable outlooks.

More news:

Women in Insurance Summit speakers announced

FMA looking for a Senior Adviser, Insurance

AIA webinar 'Guide to Medical Conditions' 28 February

ICNZ Conference 2025 is on 4 March

Recent rate changes on Quotemonster

Dear Quotemonster users,

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

• nib Ultimate Health Max, and the Specialists and Test option

Please note no changes were made to Ultimate Health, GP and Prescriptions or Dental and Optical Options, click here to learn more about nib’s quarterly premium review.

• Southern Cross Wellbeing One and Two

Please note no changes were made to the GP and Prescriptions or Dental and Optical Options.

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

Happy Crunching!

Quotemonster: excess options on Specialists and Tests

Research Discussion: medical insurance non-surgical claims

Quality Product Research (QPR) welcomes you to join Russell Hutchinson, Director of Quality Product Research, Doreen Dutt, Research Manager, and special guest, Jon-Paul Hale, Life Insurance Adviser from Willowgrow Consulting, for an in-depth discussion on medical insurance non-surgical claims.

This meeting will be held over zoom on Tuesday, 7 November 2023 11:00 am to 12:00 pm and will include the following:

• Background information and QPR’s re-rating process

• An overview of the benefit change and recent updates, from Jon-Paul

• Options to reflect the product changes in rating

• Time allocated for attendees to ask questions and provide feedback, specifically we are interested in hearing examples of relevant claims

Our blogs on the topic are linked below and more articles from Jon-Paul can be found on Good Returns:

https://www.chatswood.co.nz/home/i3xolkjs923or7z6hbieu23p87tk4q

https://www.chatswood.co.nz/home/y2elvh3b8ltl7faxpqwglj8ghjiiq0

If you are interested in joining our research discussion, please send us an email on researcher@qpresearch.co.nz and we will reply with a calendar invite.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Quality Product Research: Medical – Update on Review of the Non-Surgical Benefit Score for Southern Cross

Following on from our earlier post, we are running a consultation on the score for Southern Cross medical insurance - Non-Surgical Hospitalisation. A review process is necessary to properly assess whether equivalent benefits are being paid under other aspects of the member benefits offered by Southern Cross and to consider the value of new benefits introduced. There appear to be significant differences in practice between different cover providers.

Timeline for review

Now – advise review started, receive and review claims information. 

End of September - issue proposed rating and draft pack for research advisory board meeting.

Start of October – consult on proposed rating with industry.

Mid-October – consult with the research advisory board. 

Your help with the review would be much appreciated. We note that there are substantial numbers of non-surgical stays at private hospitals, and we expect that the majority of these stays are covered by insurers, of which Southern Cross is the largest. We are interested in more specific examples of claims you may have had covered and paid by the non-surgical hospitalisation features of medical insurance. Please contact us on researcher@qpresearch.co.nz

We look forward to your response!