Welcome to Zurich and OnePath Adviser News

I remain optimistic about the outlook for Advice, the need has not gone away, demand is stronger than ever, the investment in advice technology continues at pace and the next set of regulatory changes are likely to be more positive for advisers.

We value our strong and enduring partnership with you and we’re committed to look for ways to better serve you, protect your clients, and strengthen our commitment to advice. We are aiming to be progressively easier to do business with and you will continue to see positive changes from us to help you spend more time with customers.

Recently we welcomed the successful vote by members to merge the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA). This is an important milestone for the industry and creates the opportunity to more quickly and cohesively agree on issues and opportunities that impact the advice industry and provides a single strong voice to advocate for the important work advisers do. 

There is much to like about the final recommendations outlined in the Quality of Advice Review paper. In particular the recommendations to simplify adviser processes (SOA’s, disclosure processes and safe harbour steps) and retain commissions are positive developments. We look forward to the Government’s positive response to these recommendations. 

I would like to offer my condolences to those who have been impacted by the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria and to those customers affected by Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Floods. Our Z Zurich Foundation is supporting a number of community fundraiser initiatives during these challenging times. You can find out more information on this via our Z Zurich Foundation Linkedin page.

This year we are continuing to invest in our technology capabilities to give valuable time back to advisers and support staff. We have very recently released further enhancements so that you can now request to change the ownership for some OneCare policies from Ordinary to OneCare Super via The Adviser Portal – cutting out manual processes and valuable time. This is another win for efficiency and one of many to come. For more information on the policies and scenarios this can be applied to, please reach out to your BDM.

We want to keep you up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the industry with education and training resources available to you at any time. Our team of experts have been hard at work to build out the latest research and insights. Our first_ZONE Education webinar series ‘Practice Transformation’ kicks off this month and I hope you can join us. The series will cover some of the most topical areas of running a modern advice practice. For information on the content we will cover and to register you can go to > _ZONE Education Practice Transformation Series

I look forward to partnering with you this year, together we can help more customers get the protection they need.

Regards,

Kieran.