The road to insurance is often a challenging one. Accuro business development manager Carol Duncan has been in the health industry for over 20 years, but when she made the move into insurance, she had a lot to learn.
Duncan (pictured) shared with Insurance Business that she has been in the health industry for 22 years. She fell into health insurance after structural changes within her company meant the services her unit offered were no longer required.
“I was offered another role within the parent company, Southern Cross Health Society, as a key account manager looking after large corporate group health schemes,” Duncan said.
Coming from a health and safety background, Duncan found insurance unappealing at first, making the move difficult for her. However, she still gave health insurance a chance and eventually grew to love it.
“This experience with large corporates and developing wellness programmes for their employees really emphasised how important health insurance was. This benefit made a real difference to their staff and families giving them a choice and fast access with private health care. Making a difference matters,” she said.
“I found out that it wasn't about the product – after all, how can you be passionate about an insurance product – it was about how this enabled people to cope and have choices when people were in pain and needed surgery. They didn't have to sit on a public waiting list and to wait. Having another option made a huge difference to people’s lives, physically, and emotionally – again making a difference.”
After 12 years with Southern Cross, Duncan decided it was time for a change and took a few months off. She eventually found her way to Accuro Health Insurance and began serving as a business development manager.
“Working for a smaller health insurer really appealed to me. Their then CEO Bruce Morrison had a great vision for Accuro, and I wanted to be part of it. Lance Walker, our new CEO, has got a very similar vision, which is very exciting,” Duncan said.
“My role as a business development manager is being the main contact point and developing close working relationships with my panel of financial advisers. My main tasks include product training and providing quality service and support to existing and new advisers who offer Accuro products to their clients. I also manage the relationship with our employer group schemes and advisers who have brought these group schemes on board.”
Of course, joining a new company includes new challenges. Duncan shared that the main challenges that she has faced in Accuro in the first couple of years were developing adviser relationships and proving that advisers and their clients could trust Accuro and its products and services.
“There were many challenges when I was starting with Accuro as we were relatively unknown in the wider adviser world as a health insurance option. Health insurance is all about claims and delivering on a promise made and doing it well. Fortunately, this is a particular strength for Accuro with our fast and efficient claims turnaround,” she said.
“My other major challenge over the first couple of years was learning how the adviser world worked and how health insurance fitted in amongst the other insurance products that were deemed more necessary by some advisers at the time. I had many a challenging debate about this (once I had been around long enough and earnt my stripes) as private health insurance did have a backstop (our public health system for elective surgery) compared to other risk products.”
Nevertheless, Duncan said she enjoys her work at Accuro and loves health insurance, emphasising that the best thing about her role is receiving gratitude from clients.
“The best thing is seeing and hearing the thanks that we get from people who are going through a really stressful time when facing a serious health condition and are so grateful that we made it so easy for them to get the treatment they needed,” she said. “Our claims team gets so many wonderful comments, which is a credit to their focus and dedication to delivering for our customers. The best thing about my role is that I get to meet so many neat people in the industry who really do want to make a positive difference in the lives of New Zealanders.”
