Cigna New Zealand has finished combining of its OnePath and Cigna businesses after approval from the Reserve Bank, and following its acquisition of OnePath from ANZ in January last year.
The combined business will now operate as Cigna Life Insurance New Zealand, part of the wider Cigna Corporation. Work to combine the two businesses started in November 2018, and Cigna has now brought the two businesses under one brand, re-launched its website and released its extended product and service offering to the public.
Cigna CEO Gail Costa says the acquisition has meant significant growth for the company, and has given it access to the broker distribution channel – a vital channel for the life insurance market.
“Our revenue has tripled [since November 2018],” Costa told Insurance Business.
“OnePath was twice the size of Cigna in terms of revenue, and customer-wise we now have 450,000 total customers, of which approximately 130,000 came from OnePath. There was quite a different mix of channels and products across the two companies, and coming together made sense as we now have a very broad offering.”
“The independent financial advice channel is very key for us now, as it’s the dominant channel in this market,” Costa added. “To have that channel gives us real credibility as an insurer, whereas previously we very much worked with a direct model.”
Cigna Life Insurance is now the third largest life insurer in New Zealand, and Costa says the company is keen to “get competitive.” She says brokers have also responded positively to the business, and have seen it as a fresh entrant to a slow-changing market.
“We’ve been very keen to make some changes, freshen up the product range and get competitive,” Costa said. “This last year, we’ve had to cope with quite a lot in terms of building our platform and separating our systems from the ANZ environment. We completed that in December, and amalgamation was the next step. We have everything in place now, we’re one company and we’re ready to go.”
“We’ve had a lot of interaction and feedback from the advisers around what they want, and how we can work together,” she concluded.
“They’ve been very positive about it, as they see us as a brand new company in the market. Those that have been dormant with us are also starting to try us out, which is really great.”
