INSURANCE

BY NAOMI BALLANTYNE

Yes, you can be hit by a bus, and yes you can be struck by lightning, and yes earthquakes can still happen, and YES a pandemic can, and has, changed life as we know it!

It has to be impossible for anyone in the world today to think that they have all the time in the world ahead of them to get around to living life.

One day I am going to be my own boss. One day I am going to grow my small business into a bigger business that is not reliant on my sweat equity alone. One day I am going to buy up lots of other people’s businesses to become a large business. One day I am going to sell my business for enough money to allow me to retire into the sunset.

The truth is that there is only one day and that is today.

Tomorrow has never been guaranteed and boy has this last 12 months proven that to be true. Two of my staff, just yesterday, separately told me about a friend and a cousin (both young with no health issues) who died, that morning, overseas from Covid-19. They will never see their faces or hear their voices ever again. Those poor people never made it to their ‘’one-days’’.

In my line of work I see families facing this reality every day and I hear about their regrets even though I am a complete stranger – if only I spent more time with them, if only I had more time with them. It’s heart breaking.

The same is true with businesses. Covid-19 and response from governments to keep people medically safe, has altered forever our ability to reach our ‘’one-days’’.

We have today to think about what we can do, what is possible to do and what we aspire to do. And we have only the foreseeable future (counted in days rather than years) to do what is needed to get there.

What are we now waiting for? For the pandemic to be over? For someone else to tell us what to do? For divine intervention?

For me and Partners Life, we face the same uncertainty about the longer-term future as everyone else. Not just from the economic fall-out from the pandemic, but also from the potential medical risks that are still a significant possibility. We also have regulatory uncertainty as an insurer, and uncertainty about how the adviser regulations will impact on our distribution strategies. It would be easiest to just stay still and wait to see what the world is going to do to our business.

But that is simply not us and we certainly encourage it to not be you either. We believe well managed businesses that have momentum are going to be the businesses that not only survive the current turbulence, but that thrive once the storm calms down. Looking forward as far as possible and doing the things that keep the business moving forward, provide that momentum.

So, for Partners Life, we intend to continue with our strategies of best customer value proposition, excellent service, effective efficiency, and innovation despite all of the uncertainties we face. After all, there is one thing that hasn’t changed, and that is the fundamental need for New Zealanders to have access to life insurance products that deliver the best outcomes to them when unexpected disruptions happen, and to have great advice about how to use those products to meet their personal needs.

I don’t think Covid-19 has killed the ‘’round to it”. It has just sped up the urgency for getting ‘’round to it” because the only “one-day” any of us can count on is today. A

Naomi Ballantyne is the founder and managing director of Partners Life.