Cigna plans OnePath changes

Simon Tohill, Cigna New Zealand head of strategy, product, and integration, said the changes were part of the organisation's commitment to providing the best quality products and services to its customers.

“Since we completed the transaction to acquire OnePath last year we have worked hard to better understand the needs of our customers and advisers. We have listened – and are excited to release some initial product changes.

“This is just the first phase of enhancements we have planned to roll out over the next 12 to 18 months, with these and future improvements, our focus will always be to ensure that both advisers and customers find us easy to deal with, while we keep up with changing needs.

“More changes are on the way, and will follow the upgrade of our back office administration system as we continue to integrate the OnePath business operations and separate from the ANZ,” he said.

The standout changes include:

• Mortgage Repayment Cover now includes options to cover rental obligations or income. Cigna has also changed the offset provision, and added a claim payment cap of $7500 per month before offsets apply.
• An inflation option has been introduced to the Assurance Extra Mortgage Repayment Cover product. And, as a special introductory offer, there will be no additional cost in the first year for this benefit on all new business sold in the next six months.
• The paper application form has been simplified – making it shorter and easier to use. This is the start of a bigger project to overhaul the application forms and policy documents to make them easier to use and understand, which will be delivered later in the year.
• Cigna has amended client benefits. The benefits cover mental health counselling, wellness advice, budgeting advice, career counselling and legal advice, and are available to help ensure customers are well supported throughout their lives. Changes include extending the cover to include dependent children; adding additional wellness advice services such as dietitian advice, physiotherapy or personal trainer sessions; and making the benefits, and process to access them easier.

"Whenever we make enhancements to our product suite we pass these back to our customers. We do this according to the policy enhancement benefit included in policy documentation.

“This means that if our customers ever need to make a claim they will be assessed using the policy wording that provides the most favourable outcome.” Tohill said.

“Delivering great customer outcomes is paramount to all we do. Driving these changes is our continued focus on ensuring our customers have the right cover to meet their changing needs – both now and into the future. We look forward to releasing more enhancements in the coming months."

All changes are effective from April 8.