Rapid Change to Continue at Fidelity Life

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Advisers can expect to see further improvements and change at Fidelity Life in 2025 and can also expect these changes to continue to be made at speed, according to the insurer’s CEO Campbell Mitchell.

Speaking to RiskinfoNZ following the company’s Engage 2024 conference late in 2024, Mitchell reiterated that Fidelity Life has listened to advisers and delivered “…and we are going to continue to listen and continue to deliver value.”

Fidelity Life CEO Campbell Mitchell.
Campbell Mitchell.

Mitchell says he’s a big fan of “going out and going quickly” pointing out the wide range of product, service and customer propositions delivered during 2024  – improvements right across the breadth of the business (see: 19 Announcements Mark Fidelity Life Re-Emergence).

“There’s been a very focused, but fast, series of deliverables that have changed this business and we will keep going at speed to ensure we continue to change the business. These deliverables have been based on feedback from advisers and customers. They are insight driven,” says Mitchell.

…Teams across our business have worked incredibly hard to get us to this pivotal point. It matters to us that we get our relationship with advisers right…

He added: “Teams across our business have worked incredibly hard to get us to this pivotal point. It matters to us that we get our relationship with advisers right. Our people demonstrate that importance every day, through their ongoing commitment and focus.”

Asked about his personal leadership style, Mitchell says he believes that at a time when things are changing rapidly (noting the impact of AI and other tech developments) “…it’s critical for any leader to be super-curious about why things are happening and be really, really effective listeners so they can pick up on the cues, process that into insights and use that to influence their discussions and people and funding decisions.”

He says starting his early career as a journalist with the job of finding out information “…and then quickly processing and distributing it, has helped a lot.”

Industry Disruption

During his earlier career in journalism, Mitchell moved into executive roles in NZ and Australia at a time of huge disruption in the media industry. In Australia during the Global Financial Crisis, newspapers saw marketers pull back their media spend and at the same time Apple launched the third and fourth versions of its phones, which saw consumers dramatically change how they consumed news.

He says that double whammy was a massive disruption to media and that taught him about the need to respond quickly.

“My view is you’ve still got to move fast today, sniff the breeze and go hard. And that is why you’ll see us do a lot of things at pace at Fidelity Life – because time can be the enemy, you’ve got to do … things fast, keep moving and look for opportunity.”

He says the company wanted to showcase and demonstrate at the Engage 2024 Conference that a year of listening, of working together and working very hard “…is just the start of what we can do together with advisers. It’s a positive start but there’s so much more opportunity when we work together that we will deliver on.”

…the past year has shown that if you listen, if you commit and if you deliver, the advisers will back you…

Mitchell adds that the past year has shown that if you listen, if you commit and if you deliver, the advisers will back you. “They want to back Fidelity Life [and] they tell me they want us to succeed. We’ve done our bit and doing that has seen these green shoots of growth that are the starting point for us. It’s very much around being the fastest growing life insurer based on FSC data,” he says, pointing to its aim of 150% new business growth year-on-year.

Another area Mitchell is excited about, and something he says Fidelity Life has worked hard on, is its focus on retaining customers in a tough economic period “… so to have the ‘best in market’ retention rate is something the team can be very proud of.”

Future Changes for Advisers

Asked about what might change in the future for financial advisers in NZ and what won’t change, Mitchell thinks what won’t change is the critical value of advice itself.

He sees this as also being an opportunity to grow “…because we know that we are under-insured in NZ, and we know that advice plays a key part in providing that knowledge and information to help people make good choices, for them, their families and their businesses.”

When the company undertook a survey early in 2024, Mitchell says it was concerning that New Zealanders’ number one choice for where they sought advice was friends and family. It also found that social media was a fast-growing source of advice.

“Advice is not changing, but the channels people are using are, and the job we need to do is see that they go to a trusted source for professional advice, which has become more important. What is not changing is that advice is critical for the future of the country, for the future of economic growth and for security protection.

…advisers are becoming more agile, more flexible and more reflective of the New Zealand demographic which is enabling them to better connect, build more meaningful relationships…

“What is changing is that it’s harder to communicate that advice and reach New Zealanders in a meaningful way. So, advisers are becoming more agile, more flexible and more reflective of the New Zealand demographic which is enabling them to better connect, build more meaningful relationships and provide that much needed advice.”

Highest Paid BDM?

When questioned about a quip at Engage 2024 that he is Fidelity Life’s highest paid BDM, Mitchell says it’s a quip he’s comfortable with. He adds that, as a CEO of any business, it’s imperative to get close to its customers. For Fidelity Life “…our advisers are also our partners and so to understand, and to build relationships we’ve got to be standing next to them and talking with them – we are in the people business, and relationships are built a lot quicker in person.”

He says he spends a lot of time on the road and will continue to do so.

…We’ll continue to listen and get advice from the adviser community…

“We don’t think we’ve got it yet – not near it yet. We’ll continue to listen and get advice from the adviser community. Ultimately, they are our customers, so the closer we can get to them and listen to them and get a huge array of feedback, the better.”

Mitchell says senior executive Bronwyn Kirwan and her team have designed a sophisticated ‘listening programme’. Using multiple data points, it ensures the business is actively listening to what’s important to advisers. During the Engage event alone, about 500 discussion notes were captured from conversations with advisers. “Our team is now reviewing these insights to influence what we decide to do and in what order we do them,” he says.

Fidelity Life CEO, Campbell Mitchell …front and centre with delegates at Engage 24 in Auckland.