Australians should have access to affordable advice about their life insurance needs.

The availability and affordability of life insurance advice is essential to ensuring Australians can make informed decisions about the life insurance products that best suit them.

CALI supports the elements of the Federal Government’s Delivering Better Financial Outcomes package announced in June and December 2023, which includes measures to support Australian consumers by:

• enabling life insurers to provide Australians with limited advice on their own products, ensuring they can provide answers for simple questions when people ask
• making it easier for superannuation trustees to provide advice to working people, including about life insurance held within their superannuation
• removing red tape and improving transparency around the commissions advisers receive on products.

Australian consumers can seek advice about life insurance from a range of sources but for many people, getting that advice is too expensive or too inaccessible. There are just 15,600 financial advisers to turn to across the country and just 185 focused on specialist risk advice.

This has resulted in an unmet financial advice need for working Australians and a growing underinsurance problem that is leaving people unprotected when times get tough. Where a consumer does not wish to engage a financial adviser, they should be able to ask life insurers directly for simple advice about their products.

Currently, it is challenging for life insurers to respond adequately to enquiries. They are wary of providing advice that could be perceived as ‘personal’ and incur penalties for non-compliance to strict industry-wide regulatory obligations. As a result, life insurers are only able to provide generic product information and tell people to engage the services of a financial adviser instead.

CALI is committed to taking extra care to support Australians with a mental health condition.

We recognise that some of our members’ customers may experience vulnerability due to a mental health condition. Our members are committed to treating these customers (and their family, carer or support person as applicable) with empathy, compassion and respect.

The Life Code sets out specific obligations to providing these customers with extra support, making claims and assisting anyone who has previously lived with a mental health condition to still access a life insurance policy.

We are committed to supporting Australians who are temporarily unable to work due to an injury or illness. We want to help them on their recovery journey so they can return to work in a safe and healthy way.

We are passionate about helping deliver the protection and certainty Australians need on their best and worst days. For Australians who suffer from an illness or injury, life insurers are currently limited in their ability to help them on the road to recovery and the return to work.

Life insurers can provide rehabilitation that has an occupational or vocational focus. However, legislation prevents them from providing targeted benefits that may otherwise be covered by a private health insurer or are covered by Medicare.

There is great potential for life insurers to develop new products and offerings that would help people recover from illness or injury and return to work. Allowing life insurers to have greater involvement in rehabilitation would help create a more complete support system for people who have an injury or illness that impacts their ability to work.

Specifically, allowing life insurers to fund medical treatment and medical expenses for those eligible under a continuous disability policy would help minimise existing gaps in Australia’s income support and healthcare system that may restrict or prevent an effective return to work. It would also provide greater scope for life insurers to fund, not just promote, evidence-based early intervention and self-management options.

Australians should have access to the right financial products to support them as they manage their financial security in retirement.

Many life insurers provide retirement income products to support Australians as they manage their financial security in retirement. We are committed to further exploring opportunities to deepen the market for retirement income products in Australia. This will provide more choice and effective solutions for the five million Australian consumers who are at or near retirement.