Melbourne, 20 October 2017 – AIA Australia, one of the largest life insurers in Australia, today announced its support of the Parliamentary Friends of Insurance Group, which held its first event in Canberra on Wednesday night. The evening was hosted by the Financial Services Council (FSC) together with MLC Life Insurance and AIA Australia.
The Parliamentary Friends of Insurance Group was founded to enable politicians to engage with insurers to build awareness and understanding of the importance of insurance to the community and the economy. At the launch event, fitness data for three federal politicians – Senator Deborah O’Neill, Senator Dean Smith and Ms Terri Butler MP – was released to demonstrate how wearables and wellness programs can improve the health of Australians.
AIA Australia will be working with the Parliamentary Friends of Insurance Group to help build awareness and understanding of how insurers can improve the health of their policy holders. Its AIA Vitality program is a prime example of insurance industry health and wellness programs designed to incentivise and reward customers for physical activity and positive health behaviours.
Damien Mu, CEO of AIA Australia and New Zealand, said: “Australians’ engagement with their life insurance has been low. By integrating a wellness program that assists customers to know about their health, improve their health and reward them for making healthy choices, we can change the dynamic of engagement with life insurance. We can encourage, empower and support Australians to achieve their health aspirations.”
“Since we launched AIA Vitality three years ago, we have experienced phenomenal results with benefits for our customers. It is encouraging to see that other insurers are having similar success with their programs. An increased focus by the entire insurance industry on implementing wellbeing programs to help people on their health journey and also create real value for customers will go a long way to helping them be well, get well and protect their future.”
The Friends of Insurance launch event featured the experience of Deborah O’Neill and Terri Butler, who used the AIA Vitality program, and Dean Smith who used the MLC On Track program, to measure their fitness, sleep and travel – each wore a fitness tracker for four weeks to monitor their step count, hours of sleep, heart rate and calories burned.
Mu said: “The financial services industry has a vital role to play in promoting the prevention and early intervention of health-related illnesses affecting Australia. By doing so we can make a real difference that delivers benefits to customers, government and insurers through lower health costs and fewer claims.”
According to the World Health Organisation, there are four controllable lifestyle behaviours – physical inactivity, poor nutrition, smoking and excess alcohol – which lead to four non-communicable diseases (cancer, diabetes, respiratory and heart diseases), responsible for 90% of the deaths in Australia.
Mu added: “Integrated health and wellness programs that reward healthy behaviour are a great way to engage people and help them make those healthier choices day to day. We know that these have a compound positive impact on people’s long term health outcomes and to live longer, healthier and happier lives.”
For more information, contact:
Ingrid Nienaber, AIA Australia
T: +613 9009 4143
E: Ingrid.Nienaber@aia.com
About AIA Australia
AIA Australia Limited is an independent life insurance specialist with over 45 years of experience building real and sustainable partnerships. AIA Australia offers a range of products that protect and enhance the lives of nearly three million Australians and is widely recognised as a market leader in product innovation and development. AIA Group Limited and its subsidiaries (collectively “AIA” or the “Group”) comprise the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group. It has a presence in 18 markets in Asia-Pacific.
AIA Australia is one of the country’s largest life insurers by market share and works closely with major financial institutions and corporate partners to provide life insurance solutions for their customers. In addition, AIA Australia is the fastest growing provider of retail life insurance products sold through financial advisers. AIA Australia also works with a network of affinity partners that distribute life insurance products. By having a partnership philosophy at the core of its business, AIA Australia is focused on building genuine relationships and delivering real value to its business partners.
In March 2014, AIA Australia introduced ‘Vitality’ – the world’s leading scientifically-backed health and wellness program, to the Australian market. AIA Vitality aims to be the catalyst for real change to the positive health outcomes of Australians.
