ALUCA has just concluded the industry consultation phase of ALUCA’s Life Insurance Underwriting, Claims & Rehabilitation competency framework ( the ALUCA competency framework) . Thank you to all of the companies, executive leaders and members who have provided their thoughts and insights as well as the working group and Tony O’Leary from G & T Risk Management.
This has been a big project with a working party spending much time on the competency project for the last 12 months to ensure that it is a best practice, high level framework which can be adapted and developed further by companies in Australia to fit their own job roles. It has been adapted to the Australian life insurance market with permission, from the model developed by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII).
Background and Purpose
The background and context to this project is that ALUCA and many of its members believe it is very important for the competencies that are required to perform professionally in the underwriting, claims and rehabilitation roles to be comprehensively articulated and the compliance with them clearly demonstrated. This is in large part based on the current environment we are all operating in with increased consumer and regulator expectations of greater transparency and professionalism in the Life Insurance industry.
As such ALUCA’s working party and Board believed it helpful to publish some ideas in this respect that could be used by companies developing their own competency frameworks and was deemed a key strategic priority.
The idea of our framework is to provide a high-level indication of the technical and specialist competencies required for those working in Life Insurance Underwriting& Claims (which includes Rehabilitation aspects) as well as some high level business competencies. Whilst we are aware that some companies will already have a competency framework in place, others will only just be commencing on this journey or reviewing their existing framework and will hopefully find the ALUCA framework helpful in developing their own approach.
It is anticipated that employers will take this framework and then customise to meet their area of activity and mode of operation within the industry. The employers would also drill-down into more detail in respect of their preferred training methodology and providers. Different employers operate different structures and therefore their customisations will vary.
We need to stress that it is not ALUCA’s intention to provide a replacement for existing company competency frameworks but rather to provide information specific to Life Insurance Underwriting, Claims & rehabilitation that might be helpful to companies developing or reviewing and updating their own frameworks.
The framework defines the minimum levels of competency ( business, technical and specialist) required at various levels within these roles and is structured around competencies rather than specific job roles, allowing for the wide variations that exist in roles and companies. It is designed to assist companies in providing a transparent description of the minimum competencies that individuals must have to operate in these key customer-facing areas
ALUCA will, for its own accreditation purposes, assess against these competencies specific to our CPD program. ALUCA does not intend to attest or certify compliance but rather leave companies to make their own statements in this respect. However the framework will be regularly updated to ensure it is current and The ALUCA Competency Framework is being linked with ALUCA’s professional Accreditation levels.
ALUCA’s Industry Consultation paper was sent to:
All Australian Life Insurance and Reinsurance companies as well as a number of industry bodies including: Actuaries Institute, AFSA, ANZIIF, APRA, CII and FSC.
We also held a number of Executive Leaders lunches where the framework was tabled and discussed in Sydney and Melbourne. Thank you to all of those who attended.
Next Steps
We are now working through all of the feedback and aim to have the final and updated framework approved at the next ALUCA Board meeting – before we move to formally launch it in late Oct/early November with ALUCA’s refreshed professional accreditation levels.
Executive leaders lunch held in Sydney, August 23rd, 2017
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