Chatter From The Chair

The pace of change in our industry continues unabated throughout 2019.   Change conjures up a raft of different emotions, and the same circumstances affect different people in a different way.   Personally, I see change as a positive thing – it’s inevitable and as the adage goes, “the only constant is change”.  It’s never easy but there is nothing wrong in change, if it’s in the right direction and I look forward to the potential that lies ahead for us as an industry and as professionals within that industry. It’s never been more important to be part of a professional member industry Association like ALUCA that educates, develops and keeps you connected with your peers both here and overseas.  Please remember to update your details if you have changed roles or emails so we can stay connected.      I’m also proud to announce we will be soon be announcing free continuation of membership to any of our members taking parental leave to help them stay connected with the industry.

As much as the industry landscape changes, however, the fundamental nature of our industry doesn’t change – providing peace of mind and supporting Australasians in need.  This was so very evident at ALUCA’s Life Insurance Excellence Awards night in Melbourne. Once again what I was so struck and inspired by were the powerful submissions that highlighted the care, support and difference that the people in our industry and disciplines make to the communities and customers we serve, as well as the profound commitment people in our industry have for their own professional development. Congratulations to all the finalists and winners, and to everyone for supporting this.

We will be holding ALUCA’s strategy day in August where some important key decisions will be made about the content and educational support that ALUCA provides to our members. ALUCA’s Board have signed off on investing and updating our website that will provide a strong learning management platform for all. Further details about this will be provided following the strategy day.

I’ve also been holding many meetings and conversations with other key industry bodies including ANZIIF, industry CEOs, the FSC and PIEF to ensure we are aligned to delivering on the best outcome for our industry, our customers and our people. More updates will be provided on that shortly.

As a final aside, as we near the final State of Origin match for the year, I thought I would check which state has the highest percentage of accredited members.  My congratulations go to…..Western Australia!

As always, please contact me at chair@aluca.com with any comments, or feel free to speak to me at any of our upcoming events.

Best regards,

Jim Welsh
ALUCA Board Chair

Jim_Welsh@amp.com.au

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Relevance and resilience continue to be key themes for 2019 with the changing market and environmental conditions and a looming Federal election on May 18th. Indeed, relevance is a major theme for ALUCA’s Board this year. We are in a good financial position, with a growing membership base and have been looking at ways that we increase our relevance to members and partners. This is something that ALUCA’s board reflected on at our recent strategy day in addition to the Royal Commission report.

Addressing key themes from the Hayne report specific to life insurance underwriters, claims and rehab professionals is of critical importance to our Association. We understand the importance of us all coming together collectively as an industry to ensure we can deliver on the promises we make to our customers and the communities we serve in the fairest and most efficient way possible. These were sentiments expressed by many of the Executive Leaders at ALUCA’s Executive Leaders Briefing. It was heartening to hear everyone sharing their thoughts about what we as an industry should be doing with an industry wide competency and accreditation program being high on everyone’s agenda.

ALUCA’s Board remain very committed to continuing to provide a free, up to date and high value life insurance competency model specific to Life Insurance underwriters, claims and rehabilitation professionals that recognises a wide range of qualifications and education providers to meet robust industry competencies and standards specific to these job roles. We also will continue to invest in the ongoing update of the framework and this is now underway. We want the best outcome for the industry, our members and partners and will continue dialogue with the FSC, partners and key educational providers such as ANZIIF.

We have a busy and full year ahead with ALUCA’s state subgroups holding their MiniLuca’s. The Rehab group will be the first ones to hold their Professional development day in Sydney on May 10^th and in Melbourne on May 23^rd.

Like last year we are busy working on improving and deepening our relationships with key industry stakeholders locally, such as the FSC, who once again will  be a final judge for ALUCA’s Life Insurance Excellence Awards as well as the Actuaries Institute who have very kindly extended a special offer to all ALUCA members who may want to attend their conference in June – you can find more details about this in this edition of ReB.

Thanks to all of you for your ongoing support including ALUCA sponsors and partners and of course all ALUCA volunteers.

As always I welcome your feedback and comments at any time and look forward to seeing you at a future ALUCA event.  Please feel free to contact me on chair@aluca.com

Best regards,

Jim Welsh
ALUCA Board Chair

Jim_Welsh@amp.com.au

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2018 was a big year yet despite it being a turbulent and very challenging time for our industry, ALUCA has achieved impressive results with our highest ever membership levels which are continuing to grow, record numbers of delegates who attended the national conference last October, an impressive variety of state events, the newly launched accredited membership  – CPLI  – which has performed strongly, exceeding forecast as did our inaugural sold out Awards night last May. Thanks to you all for your support, energy, passion and commitment to the industry and customers.

We have a lot be proud of as a member run industry Association. Primarily run by a passionate and engaged workforce of member volunteers who provide countless hours of their time to ensure we deliver a program of highly relevant educational events and content. I’d like to thank our hard working and dedicated Sub Groups, working parties, conference committee, national Board, ReB Editor and CEO for their great contribution.

The November 2018 AGM saw the election of a new board with the new terms of office, marking the end of a very successful tenure for the previous board. As you’ll see in the Board article in this edition of ReB – the re-elected Board members Devi, Chantelle, Carly, Mary, and Amanda  and our new board members – Dr Matthew Paul and Mark Raeberger,  my thanks and welcome to them all. As a board we will continue to focus on ALUCA’s growth and ongoing sustainability, modernising ALUCA’s footprint and delivering to the professional development needs of our members via ALUCA’s life insurance competency framework, accreditation and educational events, seminars and content.

Let me also echo our CEO’s thanks to our sponsors for their ongoing support of ALUCA, which enables us to provide such tangible value to our members.  I enjoyed catching up with many of them and members at ALUCA’s Australia-wide end of year events in QLD, SA, VIC and NSW all with an impressive line up of speakers.

It was a real pleasure to be part of the ALUCA TurksLegal LIFT ( Life Insurance Future Thinking)  Round Table event last November hosted by TurksLegal on  “”Mental Health: Working together to build better outcomes” with many LIFT alumni attending. By way of background LIFT consists of past winners and runners up of the ALUCA TurksLegal scholarship. The Round Table event was a highly productive meeting and we look forward to sharing this paper with you shortly.

As we take stock of the year ahead there’s never been a more important time to be on the front foot and  step up to an accredited ALUCA membership that clearly demonstrates your ongoing commitment to continuous professional development, providing our customers peace of mind that they are dealing with an experienced professional. Like me I am sure you are all proud of your qualifications, technical knowledge and understanding of our life insurance discipline and the hours spent securing formal qualifications, hours spent at ALUCA and other industry seminars, and the new things you learn daily from colleagues and peers across the industry. So make 2019 the year you become an ALUCA accredited Certified Professional Life Insurance (CPLI) member

Finally a reminder that ALUCA’s Life Insurance Excellence Award nominations are now open. I very much hope you can join us in Melbourne on May 22nd for ALUCA’s Awards night to celebrate the value that great Life Insurance claims, rehabilitation and underwriting create.

As always I welcome your feedback and comments at any time and look forward to seeing you at a future ALUCA event.  Please feel free to contact me on chair@aluca.com

Best regards,

Jim Welsh
ALUCA Board Chair

Jim_Welsh@amp.com.au

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Welcome to the spring edition of RiskeBusiness.  The pace of change surrounding our industry has certainly accelerated since the last edition back in July, and this was one of the many themes discussed at our successful conference in Hobart.    The conference will be covered elsewhere in this edition, but I will once again convey my thanks to the organising committee for the brilliant, content-rich program that they developed for us and I’d also like to thank our friends from TAS, The Association Specialists, for ensuring that everything ran smoothly.   This was our largest conference ever, with 501 registered attendees, and judging by the universally positive feedback received to date, our most successful. It was a pleasure to meet many of you in Hobart, and what I found particularly striking was the spirit of togetherness, professionalism and friendship that ran throughout the conference.  

As Amanda has noted in her column, ALUCA is currently enjoying record levels of membership, with more than 1800 financial members at the time of writing, which is approximately up 25% on October 2016.     Whilst the conference is recognised as our flagship event, Amanda and I have been fortunate to attend many of our subgroup seminars in the last 3 months which have covered a wide range of topics relevant to our members and industry, and our sincere thanks go to the volunteers who make this all possible.   The passion and commitment of the ALUCA subgroups is mirrored in their continued success, with a record 2200 people due to attend subgroup events in 2018, which in itself is approximately 25% up on 2016.   Please check the ALUCA website for details on upcoming End of Year events in your area.

You will have seen we have the notification of the 2018 AGM which is being held on 21 November 2018 in Sydney and Melbourne.    We welcome your contribution to our AGM, and proxy voting is available should you be unable to attend in person.    The AGM also sees the election of a new board, marking the end of a very successful tenure for the current board, which on top of the growth outlined above, has seen great success in securing ALUCA’s ongoing sustainability, modernising ALUCA’s footprint and delivering to the professional development needs of our members. My thanks go to each of the board members and our CEO, Amanda McKernan, for everything that has been delivered over the last two years and for their time and commitment to ALUCA’s success over that period.

Finally, I would like to convey my congratulations to Peter Jones, ALUCA’s newest life member.   Peter has made a profound contribution to ALUCA over many years and this is accolade is highly deserved.    Peter is the star of this edition’s regular “5 minutes with…” article.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the End of Year events.   As always, please feel free to contact me on chair@aluca.com.

Best regards,

Jim Welsh
ALUCA Board Chair

Jim_Welsh@amp.com.au

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Fresh from a trip overseas for a friend’s wedding, it has been good to have a few weeks out where I can reflect on ALUCA and the many changes in our industry without being caught up in the day to day and the multitude of projects and deliverables that we all juggle.

Many of th comments from members who attend ALUCA events are about just this – the importance of taking time out of the business for a few hours to invest in themselves to further their industry knowledge, grow their networks and ultimately support their professional development. On that note don’t forget that we have extended ALUCA’s special Certified Professional Life Insurance accredited membership upgrades until the end of September. Details of ALUCA’s accredited webinar for accredited members will be sent out before the end of the month.

The landscape we operate in has changed significantly over the course of the last few years, and I expect that change to accelerate during the rest of the year and I expect there to be new, or renewed, areas of focus for us as life insurance professionals over the next few months.  With that in mind, the timing of the conference in Hobart in October is ideal for challenging, insightful and invigorating debate with your industry colleagues.   As much as the landscape changes, however, the fundamental nature of our industry doesn’t change – providing peace of mind and supporting Australians in need.

This in turns leads me to think about our inaugural Excellence in Life Insurance Awards, held in May in Sydney.  My congratulations to the very worth winners, with more details in Amanda’s update.   What I found striking and inspirational was the focus on the difference that the people in our industry and disciplines make to people in the community, our customers.  This was brought home by one of the judges, and executive from outside our industry, who commented that “I know life insurance is a big industry, and an important industry, but I never realised how caring, empathetic and humanistic the people who work in it are”

As always, please contact me at chair@aluca.com with any comments, or feel free to speak to me at any of our upcoming events.

Jim Welsh
ALUCA Board Chair

Jim_Welsh@amp.com.au

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It is with great pleasure that I welcome you all the summer edition of RiskeBusiness. These last twelve months have been exceptionally busy but very rewarding delivering significant benefits for members. ALUCA’s sub groups provided state events right around the country providing valuable education and networking opportunities for all who attended. The State MiniLuca’s and Professional Development days  were again a stand out highlight for those fortunate enough to attend each of these events.

In total we delivered 36 events which were attended by more than 1,800 members and non-members – compared to 1,947 in 2016 – that number was pushed higher last year by ALUCA’s biennial conference held in October 2016.

Amanda McKernan launched and ran the Executive leaders Forum  which has been very well received and is a key initiative that will continue.

Earlier this year we updated ALUCA’s Code of Conduct to ensure that our standards remain robust while reflecting the FSC’s own industry code of conduct.

This year also saw the finalising of the ALUCA competency framework. The culmination of over 12 month’s work, this now anchors the corner stone CPLI accreditation and CPD program of our Association. Significant work has been undertaken by a team of ALUCA members to bring this to fruition. I’m really proud of this great work and want to thank everyone who contributed to this. The CPLI accreditation is available to all ALUCA members with a special amnesty period until the end of 2017 where members will continue to only be charged for the member level they are currently on for 2018 when they upgrade to an accredited level.

We have also been busy engaging with our sponsor partners and I am so grateful for all of their support over the past 12 months. I’m delighted to share that we have also built some solid associations with fellow counterparts around the globe these have included LADUCA,  AHOU and  LUCID which is a fundamental part of ALUCA’s strategy to connect members with their counterparts around the globe.  We are also busy working on improving and deepening our relationships with key industry stakeholders locally, such as the FSC, who recently provided some feedback on our updated Code of Conduct and also ANZIIF meeting with their CEO at the end of last year.

I would like to thank all of our Sub Groups and other working parties, Michael Reid the Editor of RiskeBusiness and other volunteers  who have worked tirelessly to deliver an impressive program of work this year.

I would like to sincerely thank our CEO, Amanda McKernan and my fellow Board members Devi, Chantelle, Monique, Mary, Sean, Paula, Carol, Carly, Amanda and Ben. Your commitment, dedication and contribution to ALUCA are greatly appreciated. It has been a pleasure to work with such dedicated and passionate people.

Finally, I’d like to wish you all a merry Christmas and I look forward to seeing you in 2018.

Jim Welsh
ALUCA Board Chair

Jim_Welsh@amp.com.au

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The relentless march of time sees us already in Spring 2017 and the first mince pies appearing in the shops, which can only mean the end of year is 3 months away.  As always, it has been a busy time for all in ALUCA with many great events held in the last few months, showcasing all that is wonderful about our association and delivering to our three key words of Educate, Develop, Connect.  

We are in the time of year when our subgroups put on their main events of the year – the Professional Development Days / MiniLucas.    WA, QLD, SA and Rehab have led the way hosting fantastic events which have had great feedback from our members, with VIC to come on 12th October and NSW/CMG on October 17th.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the events I have attended, and most importantly have learnt a great deal in the process – both about our industry and the committed professionals in it.      Perhaps I should offer a prize for those who now know what FLK stands for!

These events could not have occurred without the unstinting hard work and dedication of all our subgroup committee members, and again my heartfelt thanks goes out to all of them.

I am writing this update from Melbourne airport as I wait for a plane to Europe to see family.  Fortunately for me, this year’s LUCID conference in the U.K. is being held at the same time as my trip and I am looking forward to meeting our British counterparts and discussing the latest developments in our industry in that part of the world, and trying to work out what could be coming our way soon.  Connecting with associations such as LADUCA, LUCID, AHOU etc. is a fundamental part of our strategy for our association to connect our members with their counterparts around the globe.  We are also busy working on improving and deepening our relationships with key industry stakeholders locally, such as the FSC, who recently provided some feedback on our updated Code of Conduct for members.

We are in the final stages of the ALUCA – Turks Legal scholarship and the ALUCA-MLC-Monash Award both announcing this year’s winners in mid-October and our thanks go to both Turks, MLC and Monash for their ongoing support of these awards each year and the time, effort and expertise that goes into making them successful.

I’m pleased to announce that our membership numbers continue to grow.  Historically we have seen numbers dip in an off-conference year but this year they have increased by 5% and we continue to welcome new members each week.  We are currently sitting in excess of 1500 members, which is considerably up from under 1200 in Spring 2015.   Speaking of the conference, you will have seen that we have announced next year’s conference which will be held in Hobart from 11-13 October and it is already shaping up to be our best ever.

You will shortly be receiving information regarding this year’s AGM which will be held in mid-November.   Included in this will be information regarding some slight amendments to our rules to both modernise our association (e.g. allow electronic voting) and to make our association more sustainable.

I’ll leave Amanda to provide a full update on the other work that has been taking place, most importantly the capability framework which is an extremely exciting modernisation of our accreditation framework, and one that is exceptionally relevant and important to us as Life Insurance Claims, Underwriting and Rehabilitation professionals.

As always, please feel free to contact me on chair@aluca.com.

Jim Welsh
ALUCA Board Chair

Jim_Welsh@amp.com.au

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I’m delighted to share lots of positive news with you for this winter edition of RiskeBusiness. It’s been a highly productive last quarter delivering against some key objectives aligned to ALUCA’s strategic pillars. This has included the release of ALUCA’s new website and database, the production of our capabilities framework which will be available soon for consultation, growth in membership numbers and our first Executive Leadership Forum. 

We are also continuing to build our strategic partnerships with key industry bodies and associations. To that end I recently met with key representatives from both the Financial Services Council (FSC) in Sydney and LADUCA in NZ exploring how we can more closely work together and ensure greater knowledge sharing. Jesse Krncevic, Policy Manager for Life Insurance at the FSC has very kindly agreed to contribute articles to RiskeBusiness providing regular updates from the FSC.

ALUCA is proud of our associations with all of our sponsorship partners so it was great to be part of ALUCA’s inaugural Executive Leadership Forum supported by our Platinum sponsors.

It is also very  pleasing to see that our membership numbers have increased since last year, which is testament to the hard work so many people across ALUCA are putting in to deliver to our members, each and every year, against all of our bywords:  Educate, Develop, Connect.

The 2018 national Biennial conference committee, led by Board members Sean Potter and Mary Sinclair Porter, has also been hard at work and you will have seen that the dates, venue and location for the conference have all been finalised.  We’re off to Hobart for 11th – 13th October 2018, and having heard some of the initial detail I’m really excited with what lies in store for us.

As you will no doubt know, the Code of Practice goes live on 1 July, and I have enjoyed many discussions about what this means for us and our industry, not least the recent ALUCA TurksLegal LIFT seminar for the alumni of the ALUCA Turkslegal Scholarship.   We have also updated ALUCA’s Code of Conduct to tie in with the release of the Code of Practice and will be re-releasing this to all of our members.

As always, it has been great to meet so many of you at the sessions I have attended, and as ever, I am available for a chat about our association, our industry and our individual disciplines.   If there’s anything you’d like to have a chat about in the meantime, please feel free to contact me at chair@aluca.com, or our CEO, Amanda McKernan, at ceo@aluca.com.

Jim Welsh
ALUCA Board Chair

Jim_Welsh@amp.com.au

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