Work Integrated Learning Assignment 2 – Semester 1, 2020

Iain Williamson

Micro Credential URL Links:

Defining U: http://t.cred.ly/l/a33aa7a8-0179-4791-ac64-b493b2c32fed

Online U: http://t.cred.ly/l/3f332e79-5d1b-47f8-861e-b6f5ac70cf60

Strategic U: http://t.cred.ly/l/3a94556d-8a58-4d25-b891-6d0a3580a4ce

1 - Introduce and showcase yourself

Hi,

I am Iain Williamson, and I am conducting my coop year at Think Insurance a

Corporate Authorized representative of Marsh Advantage Insurance.

and that is me! 

I have now been in my placement for 4 months, with 50% of the time working
from the comfort of my own bedroom, which is not too bad. I think the
honeymoon phase of working from home is beginning to wear off around at the
time of writing this… I do miss the office very much.

I was originally doing an economics and finance 3 year degree at the beginning
of my university journey in 2017, however after many frustrating classes surrounding the
microeconomics of the coffee industry in South America as well as the marginal utility of a Big-Mac I
thought that Accounting might be a better fit for me. So, I transferred courses over to the 4-year
professional degree with the hopes of getting some work experience under my belt. During 2019 I
was a tad bit lazy with searching for a placement and I really let things slip with the coop, however
luckily the lovely ladies at the RMIT Coop Program helped me out and passed on my Resume to
Think Insurance, who were crazy enough to hire me! Things have been fantastic there so far and I
have learnt so much and I am excited to show off some of my work and how it has contributed to my
learning.

Outside of work and university I enjoy cycling, and in 2018 I enjoyed cycling so much I decided to
ride my bike across France! Which was an awesome experience to commemorate 100 years since
the end of the First World War. Added to that I love history (almost as much as Accounting) I love to
read all about and learn everything I can.
2 - Provide evidence of your achievements towards your learning goals and reflect on those
achievements.

So, at the start of the year… well kind of start, I did completely forget to do this. However, the goals
are still the same nevertheless!

Goal 1: Learn as much as possible about the life insurance industry and familiarize myself with the
products on Think Insurance’s APL.

My placement with Think Insurance is completely within the Life Insurance field. I am working with 4
key products which I will talk about to demonstrate my knowledge so prepare to be educated…

The Life Industry

As I am sure you know there are a lot of crazy changes in this field now. With the Royal Commission
into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry in late 2017/early
2018 the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has been given some crazy superpowers
and is able to make significant changes, which they did with Income Protection in April 2020. So let’s
try and not get side-tracked… and talk about the four key products in Life Insurance.

Term Life: Well this one is simple. The life insured takes out a policy which may be for personal or
business purposes and they pay a premium and if they die or are diagnosed with a terminal illness
before a designated age or term (usually 85, but some are whole of life) the insurance company pays
the policy owner the sum insured plus indexation.

TPD: Total Permanent Disablement, if the life insured becomes unable to work in either their own
field (own occupation definition) or any field (any occupation definition) due to their becoming
totally and permanently disabled (quadriplegic, massive stroke etc…) then they would receive an
insurance payout.

Income Protection: The insurance companies lose a heap on this one, and you will be able to guess
why in a minute! If you have this insurance, you’ll have a monthly benefit in place (no more than
75% of your income) and if you are unable to work because of some sort of illness or injury then the
insurance company will pay you this amount every month for a predetermined benefit period (up to
age 70 sometimes!)

Trauma: This is probably the most interesting out of the bunch… the insurance is to protect you
when you experience trauma events (cancer, heart attack, stoke etc) and will pay you to which is
designed to replace some income and pay for medical treatment and other event caused expenses.
Goal 2: Familiarize myself with underwriting procedures and be able to predict how insurers will
approach certain issues.

Luckily before all this madness started with Covid-19 I was able to attend an Underwriting Workshop
to get familiar with those mysterious people… It was hosted by TAL in their wonderful office on La
Trobe St.

I was able to learn about how common medical problems such as high cholesterol and diabetes and
how they are underwritten across all four key life products as well as some tips on what to look for in
those crazy MBA20 bloodtests… essentially your cholesterol should not be above 6.5 mmol/l or
you’ll probably not be able to get insurance or you’ll get some serious loadings (when the insurance
company inflates your premium by a % due to increased risk).

With regards to loadings we had a client who had a loading for such weird reason; playing
polocrosse – the sport that all the Royal’s play with the horses… It was a 25% loading from MLC, and
when your premium was already $35k per year and extra 25% is quite hefty! We did a full review for
him and moved him over to OnePath got the loading removed and saved him thousands!

Goal 3: Understand how an SoA is written and how to write them myself without assistance and
only a peer review

At the time of writing these goals I was quite limited with my Statement of Advice writing, which I
have really improved upon now! In-fact below are some snippets from SoA’s and RoA’s I’ve written.

To give you some context; a Statement of Advice is document which is given by a financial adviser as
a formal recommendation on what the adviser is suggesting (usually written by the grunt
paraplanner, me). They can be short or really, and I mean long (10K words long) depending on who
the audience is.

For example a wholesale investor client insuring their board of directors may only need 2 pages,
while a family with 5 kids and desires to send the kids to private school + clear house debt and have
2 other investment properties is going to have something like 30 pages!

Attached will be a Record of Advice.

Context around it: Two clients (Husband and Wife) came to us looking for the whole nine yards, Life
TPD, Trauma and IP as they were borrowing for a house and wanted security for their family. They
wanted to send their two lovely kids to private school and even pay for their University tuition (wish
they were my parents!). So, I wrote a SoA for them and with all these things in mind and the
insurance was a bit outside their price range, as the John is a smoker, he has a default 50% loading
will all insurers.

So, Jenny raised some concerns after seeing the SoA with Carolina (my boss) and said that we
needed to amend the numbers to indicate a more cost-effective solution. Jenny was also concerned
about placing too much within super which could erode their superannuation balance.

I then wrote a Record of Advice with the updated changes to present to the client and the document
is below… All the names are fake (obviously) but the story is a real one that I worked on.

Enioy! And thanks for reading my assignment!