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Insurance giant Tower has dropped its face-to-face Lifestyle_ brand, in preference for a phone-based model.
Starting in April, the Lifestyle_ model will be replaced with a phone-based service provided by InsuranceLine, which was acquired by Tower in October last year.
Tower head of distribution support, Amy Calvert, said that while the Lifestyle_ brand had been delivering "excellent results" and was popular with some brokers, it was time and labour intensive and was only suitable to 10% of mortgage broker businesses.
As a result, the company had decided to withdraw the brand in favour of a phone-based model, which will involve Tower representatives calling brokers' customers with insurance offerings.
"Tower has only ever introduced models that help brokers maintain ownership of their customers. The phone-based model will respect brokers' customer ownership by not competing with their core financing business and by paying commission for new and existing sales," Calvert said.
She went on to say that the service will "overtime" be made available to the majority of ex-Lifestyle_ brokers as well as new brokers wishing to offer protection to their customers.
Calvert also stressed that Tower would continue its support of the mortgage broking channel.
"We have been and will continue to be an industry partner. We will continue to develop new models and ways to bring protection to Australians taking out a mortgage through their mortgage broker," she said.
"Tower is the only listed life insurer in Australia, and independent to the banks, and continues to be well aligned to the success of the mortgage broker channel."
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