VIC UPDATE

From Don Glendinning

They say time flies when you’re having fun and before you know it, we’re nearing the end of summer and heading into autumn again. This passing of time brings exciting changes within our team. We welcome Merle Kahn as a Business Development Consultant who started with us in November and whom many of you will have spoken with already. She brings a fresh new set of eyes and a can-do attitude which has already had an impact on our team. We’ve also sadly had Jeremy Drake leave us due to a fantastic opportunity with Centurian and we wish him all the best of luck and success in his new role. Replacing Jeremy is a familiar face to us all, meet Shehan “Shak” Shakoor. He’s already hit the ground running and will be a huge asset to our Victorian sales team.

Personally, I was lucky enough to have spent a couple of weeks back in Canada visiting my family in October and in January, my mum joined us in Melbourne to escape the cold for a couple of months. The kids are back to school and we’re all just trying to get back into the usual routine.

From a business perspective, again exciting times at NEOS are ahead with business really starting to ramp up as all of you return from leave. We truly appreciate you looking to us to assist in protecting your clients. In the second half of this year, we’re excited to see our insurance platform grow with the launch of our newest product and partner, more details will follow on this over the coming months.

Finally, if there’s anything that I or my team can do to help, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’ll be happy to assist.

And remember, if you have any colleagues that don’t have an adviser code with NEOS and would like one, please send them our way and we’ll look after them.

Thank you for your continued support and partnership, it’s greatly appreciated and not taken for granted. We look forward to continuing these relationships into the future.

QUALITY OF ADVICE REVIEW

The Quality of Advice Review (QoAR) commenced on 11 March last year following recommendations 2.3, 2.5 and 2.6 of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.

The QoAR Final Report was released on 8 February 2023, listing key recommendations and the associated implications for the life insurance industry.

Following the release, Michelle Levy sat down with Allens to discuss her recommendations behind key proposals and what she envisaged the proposals would do in practice. Clarifying how the changes are expected to impact both advisers and institutions under the new regime with the aim for all Australians to have access to high quality and affordable financial advice.

You can listen to the session here.

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the 12-month period ending September 2022 was 7.3%. Therefore, for all renewals on or after 1 January 2023, NEOS Protection and Encompass Protection clients who have selected the Indexation Benefit will see their sums insured automatically increase by 7.3%.

We understand that your clients are feeling the effects of inflation across all their household bills, and we’re seeing increased numbers of customers seeking to reduce their sums insured.

To help us process these requests efficiently, we would appreciate it if you can inform us prior to the anniversary date if your client does not want the Indexation Benefit to apply, or if they want to make any other alternations to their cover date.

If you have any questions, reach out to your dedicated Business Development Manager.

THE NEOS LIFE PLATFORM

Last month, we hosted a webinar series on the NEOS Life Platform to showcase how we’re helping transform the way advisers manage their client’s insurance needs.

In a declining market where we’re seeing an increasing cost of advice and advisers leaving the industry, we’re driving change to find cost effective ways to provide you and your clients high quality life insurance.

Our aim is to reduce the number of systems, processes and personnel that advisers engage with. We understand having choice of product features, underwriting outcomes and pricing is a necessity to provide the best insurance solutions that meet your client’s needs. Giving advisers access to multiple products through a single technology platform with standardised application and administration processes, all with the support of a dedicated group of insurance professionals, helps advisers reduce costs in servicing their clients.

Both NEOS Protection and Encompass Protection are now available on the NEOS Life Platform, with another product in development. We’re passionate about trying to make risk advice easier, providing advisers with a range of high-quality products on a single log in, easy-to-use platform that advisers are familiar and comfortable with.

If you didn’t get a chance to join us, you can watch the NEOS Life Platform webinar here.

OUR SHORT-FORM WEBINARS ARE BACK!

Don’t miss our popular short-form webinars – helping you better understand what NEOS is all about, and how we can help you get the best for your clients. We also want to help with your CPD hours.

To do that, we’re bringing back our regular webinars from our growing library of accredited and non-accredited presentations.

Each topic will give you the opportunity to hear from a subject matter expert across both of our brands – NEOS Protection and Encompass Protection, and the ability to ask questions directly of them.

Keep an eye on our NEOS Protection and Encompass Protection events pages for new topics.

Next up, we have the Vivo Virtual Care for Encompass Protection webinar. Register now!

THE NEOS COLOURING COMPETITION IS BACK AGAIN!

We had great feedback on the NEOS colouring competition last year so we’re kicking it off again just in time for the school holidays. The competition will open on 1 April with winners announced on Monday, 8 May. The competition terms and conditions can be found here.

We hope that your kids (or yourselves) join in on the fun. If not to create a masterpiece, at the very least we hope it will give you some quiet time while we keep the kids busy.

How to enter

Select one of our designs
Colour in, have fun and submit your artwork

Best of luck to all and thanks for joining in on another round of fun!

NEOS CONTINUES TO GROW

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve hired eight new people across operations and sales – supporting our growth and strengthening our commitment to continually deliver the NEOS Experience we’re known for.

In operations, we welcomed three service consultants, a tele-interview consultant and a Digital Transformation Manager.

Aparna Sharma joined the NSW service team as a Service Consultant in January. She joins us from MLC and has seven years’ experience in financial services across boutique and large corporate firms.

Danielia Johannes joined the WA team as a Service Consultant in December 2022. Prior to joining NEOS, Danielia worked at AIA for 14 years, and brings with her a wealth of experience in life insurance administration.

Emma Gawley also joined the WA team in December 2022 as a Service Consultant. Emma joined the team from BT where she was a customer service specialist for three years.

Celine Mayo has joined the QLD tele-interview team. Joining us from Zurich, Celine has over 10 years’ experience in tele-communications and tele-interviewing.

Rin Xia joins in a newly created role as Digital Transformation Manager. With over 15 years’ experience in the IT industry, Rin will help advise, shape and support the delivery of technology led transformation programs to enhance the customer, adviser and user’s digital experience.

In our sales team, we had two business development managers and a business development consultant join us.

Marc Scalercio joins us as a Business Development Consultant looking after the WA panel of advisers alongside State Manager, Reon Botha. Prior to joining NEOS, Marc worked as an Aged Care Adviser for a private company and he also worked at iSelect for nine years.

Shehan Shakoor joined the sales team in Victoria as a Business Development Manager. His experience as a successful BDM spans over nine years, working at AIA.

Victor Li is the newest member of the Queensland sales team joining as a Business Development Consultant. He brings with him an in-depth knowledge of the advice process and relationship management skills with five years’ experience working as an adviser at Westpac and in a private practice.

We’re committed to providing the best experience – the NEOS Experience – for advisers and their clients and we’ll keep investing in our people and resources as needed to ensure this.

VIVO VIRTUAL CARE FOR ENCOMPASS PROTECTION

Vivo Virtual Care is available for Encompass Protection customers through their policy at no extra cost.

Vivo is a holistic health, wellness and recovery program that provides care and support through life’s journey. Accessed through the Vivo Virtual Care e-health portal, your clients can connect with over 50,000 medical specialists online.

With 17 tailored services provided virtually in areas such as fitness, nutrition, cancer care and recovery, Vivo was created with the belief that health and wellness support should be available all the time. Offering a range of benefits that are available 24/7 through the portal means, as long as your clients have internet access, they will continuously have the support they need at the tip of their fingers.

Want to learn more? Join us for our Vivo Care Webinar on Thursday 16 March by registering here.

LET US KNOW HOW WE'RE DOING

We want to ensure we’re providing solutions to make advisers’ lives easier. So, if there’s anything you feel we could be doing better or if you have any suggestions on how we can improve the NEOS Experience, please let us know.

While this edition of our newsletter has highlighted some of the great successes we’ve recently had, we’re not too proud to think that we can’t be better.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me as your State Manager or alternatively your BDM. We’d love to hear from you! And of course, positive feedback is also appreciated.

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