I want to thank the Parliamentary Joint Committee for the opportunity to speak today as the Chief Executive Officer of MLC Life Insurance.

We acknowledge that, in light of recent challenges, the sector as a whole has some work to do to recover the trust of Australians. We hope that our participation today will assist in that.

MLC Life Insurance is Australia’s fourth largest life insurer, with a market share of approximately 11%. We’ve been in operation for 130 years.

We are proud to insure 1.4 million Australians.

Last year we paid out almost 900 million dollars in claims.

Our claims philosophy is that we are always there for our customers at claims time, over and above just paying valid claims.

It’s our culture to pay claims quickly and with a minimum of fuss. Our team of claims assessors and recovery specialists have the right skills to support each customer with integrity, fairness, and compassion.

To be clear, we are a manufacturer of life insurance only and do not own distribution.

We offer our customers a full range of group and individual life insurance products through a variety of channels tailored to their needs. Importantly, because we are active in all customer channels, we are channel agnostic.

In October last year, MLC Life Insurance became a specialised, standalone life insurance business with the purchase of 80% of our company by Japanese mutual, Nippon Life - one the world’s  pre-eminent life insurers.  This is enabling us to invest significantly in our process, technology and people.

It is clear there has been a loss of trust in the life insurance industry.

While we are there for customers in their toughest moments, we know there have been too many instances where they have been let down.

We are not perfect, and we need to do better.

As an industry, we have made good headway in addressing these issues in the last 12 months. The Code of Practice, Life Insurance Framework reforms and the work on minimum standard definitions are all welcome steps.

But while these changes are necessary, they are not sufficient on their own to regain trust.

Our customers deserve better.  Their expectations about service are evolving rapidly and increasing.

We need to revolutionise the way we deliver life insurance in order to be relevant and sustainable.

Our response at MLC Life Insurance is to invest to better serve our customers.

Our Claims Transformation program, bringing in the latest technology, more accurate underwriting, and digital capabilities - all supported by early intervention and rehabilitation - has been developed with the express purpose of supporting customers in their time of need.

Our ambition is to become Australia's leading and most trusted life insurer.

Simply put, we want more customers to choose MLC Life Insurance as their life insurance provider, and become advocates for us.

We will only achieve that ambition if we continue to do the right thing by customers.  

Thank you.