Pinnacle Life has increased its electronic underwriting limits by 25% enabling it to offer life cover or mortgage cover up to $1million instantly online.    

Pinnacle Life first launched its instant, online life insurance with electronic underwriting in May 2007 with a limit of $500,000 and increased this limit to $800,000 in January this year. 

Today’s increase lifts the previous limit by 25%, enabling consumers to get $1million cover instantly online, without a medical… and appealing to a broader audience than ever before.

Pinnacle Life was today named supreme winner of the US-based ‘2008 INNovator of the Year’ award.  

This award is the highest accolade for technology innovation within the insurance industry.  

The award recognised Pinnacle Life’s instant insurance website www.pinnaclelife.co.nz, a world-first e-commerce website which pioneered electronic underwriting, offering consumers immediate online life insurance cover. The proposition is backed by global giant Hannover Life Re whose Australian underwriting team contributed to the rule-development of the electronic underwriting engine. 

The INNovators awards are organised by the Chicago-based Insurance Networking News (INN), the leading technology publication for the global insurance industry with a global readership of 58,000. 

Pinnacle Life was the only non-US company to make the top twenty list of finalists, which included giants such as AIG, Allianz Life, AON, and Warren Buffet’s company GEICO.  

Winners are determined by a panel of expert judges who recognised Pinnacle Life as the only finalist whose innovation directly benefited the customer, rather than merely delivering cost savings to the insurance provider.  

Pinnacle Life launched its website in May 2007, making it the first life insurance provider anywhere in the world to deliver immediate, fully underwritten online cover to consumers. Pinnacle Life set out to target an emerging life insurance market amongst internet-savvy consumers and has enjoyed significant growth since it launched instant life insurance online.  

The technology behind Pinnacle Life’s success is provided by Intelligent Life.   

Read more in…. 

• Insurance Networking News announcement
• Sourcemedia  
• NZ Herald
• Good Returns
• Computerworld
• Scoop  
• CIO
• National Business Review  
• Market Watch 

Today is… World Dental Day!   (Applause)  

What, you may ask, do your pearly whites have to do with life insurance?? 

Well… there is this study suggesting people with poor oral hygiene are more likely to suffer heart disease, which of course increases your probability of an early death… which impacts directly on life insurance!!  

Yeah, right… you say. Well the study was reported in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine in December 2005, in which more than 40,000 US adults aged 40 to 79 from 22 states were studied. None of the subjects smoked. The study concluded that “A significant association was observed between the extent of tooth loss and heart disease prevalence.”  

In fact, the study turned up the following extraordinary results…   

Number of teeth missing        % of people in the group that had heart disease

• 1 to 5 missing teeth                6.8% had heart disease

• 6 to 31 missing teeth              10.2% had heart disease

• Complete tooth loss                11.5% had heart disease

…meaning people with tooth decay are technically in a higher risk category when they apply for life insurance and they should pay more.    

So, what about a question on the old life insurance application form probing your oral hygiene habits, eh? 

Pinnacle Life has today signed up with Get Smart Financial Solutions, a specialist financial service provider to the NZ accounting sector.  

Supporting a network of over 200 accounting practices nationwide, Get Smart has added life insurance to its existing range of services including Finsmart, Feesmart and Smart Online Finance (SOFi).  

The new life insurance service is branded DIYLife.   

HOW IT WORKS  

Accountants linked to the Get Smart network that subscribe to DIYLife will be entitled to offer life insurance to their clients.  

Their clients will access life insurance or mortgage insurance products online via DIYLife and those with manageable health issues will be able to buy a policy up to $800,000 instantly.  

Policies are issued by Pinnacle Life through its instant life insurance website.   

DIYLife guarantees the lowest premiums in NZ, in line with Pinnacle Life’s proposition of value for money products. Clients of DIY life also qualify for additional benefits which are automatically added to their policy.  

There is a worldwide trend of accountants expanding into other financial services and this was the reason Get Smart Financial Solutions was formed – to help Accountants in NZ build more dynamic, profitable and sustainable practices.  

We look forward to 200 accounting practices across New Zealand fully engaged in offering life insurance – we think this is a great initiative…

Websites are now two-a-penny offering ‘calculators’ that enable you to work out the amount of life insurance cover you need.     

But check under the hood for a ‘disclaimer’ saying the people operating the website are not responsible if you use their calculator and get burned…  Some disclaimers go even further saying you can’t rely on any of the information presented on their website while buying life insurance… nothing’s guaranteed!    

We wondered about the true value of providing an insurance calculator or indeed a life insurance website on this basis.   We think website operators should be willing to stand 100% behind the information, tools and services they provide… no weasel clauses! J  

PINNACLE LIFE doesn’t provide advice on its website, but you can be sure we’ll stand behind everything that is presented on it… no iff’s, no but’s, no weaseling out of our obligations.   

And just by the way, here’s the caffine calculator we ran on a previous blog… the authors of this blog stand 100% behind it also!!