Craig Simpson for MAS Business Risk Advice team

Speaker: Craig Simpson, Head of Business Advice

Craig Simpson: As you know, we launched our broker model for MAS on the 2nd of April, very successfully. We issued our first policy on the 2nd, and that policy is now live and the Member has his invoice. We also have a couple of quotes in the pipeline, and those should hopefully go live pretty soon as well. The next stage is to bring our Members home. So all those Members that were placed with 3rd party brokers, for covers like Cyber that we didn't write previously. They will be contacted over the next couple of weeks and they will be brought home. We will be able to actually take over those policies, and when the policies come up for renewal, we'll actually be able to provide them with alternate quotes or just renew those policies if the terms are favourable. There's also Members that have cancelled their policies with us over the years, and this is an opportunity to, call them and bring them home. Find out the reason why they left MAS, and in most cases it was because we couldn't assist them with the covers that they were requiring. We now have the opportunity of bringing those Members home as well. In terms of the out of scope, policies that we have currently on our books with MAS, those will be transferred from MAS to the broker format or broker model. And the reason why we are doing that is to make sure that the costs are not becoming uneconomical for the Member and also to protect, our current book of business, in terms of writing business that's not in the scope that MAS is geared to write. We're gonna be using new software. So the new software is called Insight, and this is a programme that has been used internationally and locally, by I think it's 53 brokers in New Zealand, and there's a couple of hunder brokers in Australia that are using it. It's proven software, it is gonna make our lives a lot easier. There's gonna be a few months of working things out and making sure that we can transfer data from the Insight programme back into our SAGE CRM. But ultimately, the system will be able to do anything we'll need it to do in terms of issuing of policies, endorsing policies, processing renewals, getting quotes and so on. So the purpose of this video is just to give you a short update as to where we are at the moment. And I'll continue giving you these updates as time goes by. I'll also be introducing the team to you over a period of weeks, so that you have an opportunity to get to know the people behind Business, Business Risk and Business insurance at MAS.

Craig Simpson: This change means that we have a wider scope of product that we can talk to our Members about. It's fantastic sitting in front of a Member and having a full range of products that you can actually discuss with them to take care of all their needs. One of the hardest things when you are an Adviser is to, provide advice to a Member and then have to refer the Member to somebody else to actually complete the job. So, what this broker model actually means for us as a business and for our Advisers and Members is that we have the full package. We can sit in front of a Member and comfortably offer them any cover that is available in the market to fulfil the needs that they have to protect themselves and their businesses.

Craig Simpson: As I mentioned, I would be introducing the Business Risk Advisers over the next couple of weeks. And the 1st one off the rank is Andrew Robb, who I'm sure all of you do know. And if you don't know him, you would have seen him around the Wellington office already. He's just come back to MAS after a short stint at KiwiBank. Absolutely bleeds MAS blood. Loves what we do. Loves our Members. There are not too many Members, actually, that don't know Andrew Robb. So I'll leave it up to him to explain a little bit about himself and what he loves about being a Business Risk Advisor at MAS.