Naomi Ballantyne: How I got to the top

Being a woman in a male-dominated industry is an advantage, says Naomi Ballantyne. Photo / Greg Bowker

An insurance boss says women wanting to make it to the top of the corporate ladder need to show they are the best at what they do and put their hand up for the roles they want.

Naomi Ballantyne is chief executive of Partners Life, the third insurance company she has helped to found.

She talked to the Herald's Tamsyn Parker about life choices, why she cares about insurance and the industry's major challenges.

At age 19 you dropped out of a marine biology degree to go into insurance. What made you change tack at that point in your life?

I enjoyed the learning but quickly discovered that career opportunities for marine biologists were few and far between.

I was also getting married and couldn't afford to be a married 'student', so I applied for the first job that caught my eye: management trainee, life insurance.

I had no idea what life insurance was when I took that role at GRE, but found quickly that it offers wonderful opportunities for personal and career development and the chance to make a difference in people's lives when they need it most.

I got hooked very early.

Partners Life is the third insurance company you have helped to start - many people would see insurance as pretty boring - what gets you out of bed to work in this sector?

I get asked this question a lot, and the answer is always the same.

Through all of the difficult times over the past 30-plus years, that feeling of 'doing good' is what still drives me.

As a woman in a male dominated industry what are the biggest challenges you face and how do you overcome them?

I have found being a woman is an advantage.

I have different experiences and different aspirations from which to draw on than the majority of my peers.

I understand them completely, given my many years of experience working alongside and/or competing with them, but I think figuring me out is much harder for them.

I have always used my understanding of, and empathy for, the lives of our customers, advisers and staff to help develop strategies which are unique to us.

When it's too hard to play the ball, playing the man (or in this case the woman) often becomes the game plan, and I have had plenty of distressing things said about me over the years.

I haven't found another industry where, as a core function of your job, you get to do so much good for New Zealanders at such difficult times in their lives.

I overcome the sometimes vicious personal attacks from competitors by taking each insult as confirmation that we are winning.

You do have to believe in yourself.

What advice would you give to other women wanting to get to into the C-suite in New Zealand?

Be better than anyone else at the job you are already in, learn all about the job you want, put your hand up for it, and then be better than anyone else at the job when you get there.

A controversial report was released last year pointing to the high commissions insurance firms pay to financial advisers as partly to blame for consumers being constantly switched between insurance firms. Why do insurers pay such high commissions and are they to blame for consumer churn?

We believe commissions, which are payable to advisers only when an application for a policy is issued to a customer by the selected product provider, are the only practical form of remuneration that truly allows financial advisers to remain independent from the product provider.

This means the adviser is free to recommend the product provider they believe offers the best value for a particular customer's needs.

The adviser only gets paid once they have provided the client with their advice and chosen the product provider.

Any other form of remuneration from a product provider to an adviser in advance of the advice being given to the client, such as salary, must by default unduly influence or restrict the adviser's recommendation about which product the client should buy.

Trail running frees my mind.

The only other remuneration option which would also enable advisers to remain totally independent from the undue influence of any one product provider would be for the adviser to directly charge the client a fee for advice.

New Zealanders need life insurance products the most when they have debts and dependents, and their livelihoods are dependent on their ability to earn an income.

That is exactly the time of life when disposable cash is at its most limited, so paying upfront fees for insurance advice on top of paying premiums would likely make that advice completely unaffordable.

Consumer churn happens across all distribution channels, regardless of the remuneration model, so the argument that commission drives churn is incorrect.

After all, having a sales quota to hold onto a salaried job is also a significant incentive to convince a customer to move existing policies to your product.

You resigned from the board of industry body the Financial Services Council after it released the MJW report. Why?

As an FSC member I was in favour of a professional, independent report on the life insurance industry as a whole, in terms of what works and what doesn't work for the consumer.

The report that was delivered was not, in my opinion, professional or on brief.

There was disagreement amongst the FSC board on how far the FSC should go to distance itself from the report.

I did not believe they went far enough, and decided to resign from the FSC to ensure Partners Life was sufficiently distanced from what I considered a very flawed, unprofessional report.

The Financial Markets Authority has asked all life insurers to provide information about churn in the market. How does Partners Life address the churn problem?

I think it's important to draw a distinction between 'churn' and justified replacement business.

Moving a customer from one provider to another is not inherently 'churn' - in many cases moving between providers can benefit customers substantially, whether that be through stronger policy wordings, better underwriting terms, more affordable premiums or a combination of those factors.

To churn business, in insurance nomenclature, is to move a customer for the primary purpose of being remunerated for recommending the client move their existing policies, regardless of the outcome for the customer.

We address churn by making it very hard to justify ever moving a client away from us.

This means offering best-in-breed products at competitive prices combined with increasing client loyalty discounts, as it is very difficult to justify moving a customer away from market-leading policy wordings.

There has been talk in the past of Partners Life listing on the stock exchange. Is that still in the plan and what would you do after that? Start up another insurer?

Yes, becoming a listed company remains our strategy for our longer term capital requirements.

We are in the fortunate position of having a successful track record of raising equity when we need it, which allows us to wait for markets to become optimal for a successful listing of a complex business like ours.

We don't believe markets are currently optimal for us to list.

You are quite a sporty person - you run regularly and play hockey. How does this help you cope with executive life?

I am not the boss in the team sport environment but just one of the team, and what I do for a day job doesn't matter one iota, which is very liberating.

When you are concentrating on breathing, on where you are putting your feet, and on where your dogs are, all thoughts of work disappear from your conscious mind.

Funny how many great ideas, or answers to difficult questions, pop into a blank mind!