Welcome to the Spring edition of Insurance Insights

Welcome to the Spring edition of Insurance Insights. As we come into this season of new beginnings, I’m delighted to bring you news of some recent initiatives designed to promote the wellbeing of our partners, your members, and the broader community.

It was a pleasure to join our LiveWell colleagues and connect with a number of our group insurance partners at the Workplace Wellness Festival in Sydney on the 22nd June. It was an outstanding program that covered really important issues – from caring for our mental health and wellbeing to promoting diversity and inclusion, and reconciliation. I was particularly inspired by the roundtables on burnout, the future of fitness and compassionate leadership.

I’d like to congratulate Dr Sally Phillips, Head of Health Services for Zurich's Life & Investments business, who presented a brilliant session on the physical and mental challenges of COVID. The pandemic has created ongoing issues for us all – so it’s great to focus on solutions we can continue to apply as we recover from the pandemic. If you would like to read more about the festival you can find out more here.

Congratulations are also due to Francis Burgess, Zurich’s Head of Pricing, Group Insurance, and MNC’s Matt Noyce, whose session ‘Where is Life Insurance Pricing Heading’ took out the Melville Actuaries Summit Prize. Francis and Matt’s presentation explored advanced data science techniques which have proven especially useful in group insurance pricing. Well done to you both!

On the 26^th August, our Zurich community proudly celebrated Wear It Purple Day, a day of annual awareness in support of LGBTQ+ youth. It was a fantastic employee event to understand the 2022 theme ‘Still Me, Still Human’, which showcased amazing guest panellists William Trewlynn, founder of Yarnnup, as well as our very own James Luck and Sally Phillips who shared their personal and thought provoking stories.

September is climate month at Zurich

In September, we’re celebrating Climate Month across Zurich. We have all seen and felt the impacts climate change is already having across Australia, with more severe effects predicted for the future. It makes Zurich’s commitment to transitioning to net zero by 2050 even more real and important.

We’re focused on cutting our operational emissions and reducing the carbon intensity of our investment portfolio. We want to enhance our planet positive products and services and build resilience in our customers and communities.

As a business, we’re encouraging our customers, partners and the community to join us on this path. But we can do things as individuals, too. It’s important for each of us to step up to raise awareness, educate ourselves a little more and take action to help reduce climate change.

CMSF conference

We were proud to be a supporting partner at the CMSF conference in Brisbane last week on the 6-7th September, where industry leaders from Australia and overseas shared the latest developments in superannuation. Find out more about the conference here.

Insights and wellbeing tips

In this edition of Insurance Insights we feature a Q&A with Ross Hickman, Strategic Client Partnership Manager, a recap on the CMSF conference and a Zoom In with Dr Sally Phillips on preventative health. We also look at the role of climate change in extreme weather, and the link between cost of living rises and physical, mental and social health.

I am also delighted to let you know that we are continuing to help make your members life easier by simplifying and transforming the traditional claims process to save you and your members time and effort. At the end of September we will be launching a smart online claims system that harnesses the power of data through API technology to simplify and automate the claims experience for your members. Stay tuned for further details.

Finally, if you have any questions about this issue’s content, or anything further, feel free to reach out to myself or the partnership team.

Kind regards,

John Mirotsos
Head of Partnerships, Group Insurance