Buying life insurance has always been restricted by geography. You could only ever buy a NZ life insurance policy if you live in NZ, a UK policy if you live in the UK and so on - you get the picture.
Ask insurers why this restriction has existed and you’ll get several answers - all of them true - along these lines:
- Life insurance is sold by insurance advisers face to face. (Hard to do if you live overseas.)
- Insurance companies require paper-based application forms with signatures and posting documents back and forth between countries is not very efficient
- Life insurance pricing is only valid for a given country. If you live somewhere else, there are different risks and therefore a different price. And life insurers only price their products for the local market.
Thanks to the internet, this has all changed.
Pinnacle Life is a New Zealand based life insurer. We launched our direct life insurance offering to Kiwi’s living in any one of 8 countries: Australia, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong and of course, New Zealand.
The foundations of Pinnacle Life’s unique offering are:
- Debunking the myth that consumers need to be sold life insurance - consumers are now buying life insurance direct and on-line
- Harnessing the power of the internet to enable instant access to Pinnacle Life’s products from anywhere in the world
- Dispensing with paper signatures. We've made the checking of a box an acceptable way to bind the insurance contract.
- Creating insurance rates that are the same for Kiwi’s living in any one of eight countries.
Whilst Pinnacle Life has launched a world-first in this regard, we don’t think it will be the last. We think, over time, all life insurance will become the global commodity it should be.
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