Who is a Unilife client?
People who are mobile, whose careers or life journeys will take them to other countries in the future. Those are the lives that we are really interested in.
An expat is not what we used to think of as an expat – a Brit or an Australian going to Kuwait for four years, then Singapore, and then home again. It is a very different market and we are not just interested in British expats, we are interested in the global expat market.
Strangely, customers seem to be getting slightly younger. It used to be 40- to 55-year-olds buying protection, but now they are around 30 to 55. There seems to be a younger element that was not there 10 to 15 years ago.
I have been surprised by how responsible they have become. It is odd because the average age of an adviser is getting older and traditionally advisers sell to their peers.
How do you distribute products?
We only distribute via two channels – independent financial advisers and, in certain countries, we have joint ventures. We have local partners in Angola, Zambia and Mozambique, and we are entering into another venture in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
With an emerging market, we can bring our experience in product design and risk, while adding value to our local partners.
We also have bancassurance arrangements where we have joint ventures with certain banks that white label our products. This gives us access to a lower age group, but it is not really insurance being ‘sold’, it is insurance being ‘bought’.
We still see that life insurance is sold. It is very hard to get a website to sell insurance. We brought out a product in 2009 that was the first offshore online life assurance product. We built a system that allowed people to purchase $250,000 worth of life cover. The problem was driving the traffic to the site.
We are selective about who we do business with because we have our reputation to protect. We pay advisers the same commission to sell our products as they would receive in the UK. But there are other insurers offering other products with a lot more commission. Which product do you think a broker is going to sell? If a product is no good and something goes wrong, it is the consumer who is going to lose out.
We spend a lot of time educating our intermediaries to explain to clients what they have bought. That way, when something happens and often the broker is no longer there, the clients know what their position is.
The concept of treating customers fairly is evident across all of our documents. For us, it is about trying to deliver something that is in clear English. If we treat customers fairly, they will treat us fairly and they will stay with us. Our policies may cost a bit more than others, but at least consumers know what they are buying.
What plans does Unilife have?
I have been working on another product that we are going to bring out later this year. It is specifically for a niche market in Europe.
People will be able to go online and select a policy, either by how much they want to pay or the sum they want assured. It will be four or five boxes to tick. I want my mum, who is 85, my son who is 12, and my 16-year-old daughter to be able to use it, and want to use it.
We will also be bringing out zero commission products. I was quite shocked about the number of intermediaries who have been asking for that.
We see a future in international life products, otherwise we would not be doing it. We also see opportunities in certain countries working with partners to deliver our products to new and developing markets, and economies.
What about the future of the market?
I see products having an increased flexibility over their lifetime. We have done that in a way by giving more flexibility on when and how you can pay premiums.
Through our terms and conditions we give clients flexibility over where they are living at the moment and where they could be living in the future.
Lots of other policies are very inflexible; if you move country, it does not mean that the insurer will, but they can cancel the policy.
Where intermediaries are going to come from in the future does concern me. I do not think there is going to be a raft of people coming into the industry. People are going to buy insurance more through banks and other financial institutions.
