Arrears come about from when clients are missing their premiums.

Last year in our business, when the global economy changed and we started getting increasing interest rates, they really hit New Zealand mums and dads. We suddenly also went to seven-day banking. So, seven-day banking is when your accounts or your bills can be paid at any time during the course of the seven days. So, normally in New Zealand, we would have had bills being paid on a Monday through Friday. Weekends it wasn't.

Then all of a sudden, we went to seven-day banking, and we had people that were spending their money maybe on the weekend, not realizing they had their bills coming out and they were getting themselves caught. And it just meant that there was a spike. In our case, it was actually about a 40% spike in arrears as clients got adjusted to what seven-day banking meant.

Here's a process that we have that worked, up to that point. And at that point, I couldn't really get my hands on what I needed to do to govern that, to manage that, to support the team around that. Now, we could just leave that experience up to the insurance companies, but that's not what we do within our business. It's all about the people.

What we like to do is to really connect with those clients and make sure that they're OK. Maybe seven times out of 10, it'll just be a credit card that needs to be changed. Well, they might have just not put enough money in their bills account, but there will be some that really need that extra care. And so by being available and isolating those that might be a little bit more vulnerable, we're able to add value. So, what we did is we actually looked at our process and we improved it. And that's the thing you should do with all processes. If they don't work or if they need tweaking, do the time.

And we did. We spent some time looking at that. And then, I now have an executive summary that I could push a button on at any time that can tell me how many clients are in arrears, which companies, whether it's first, second or third, who's vulnerable. And those vulnerable people are already in my diary before I even have to think about it.

Now I feel like I'm in control of something that was quite messy for a while. And when things are messy in your business, you're not using your time well. So that's just an example of how a process can actually really help use your time wisely but make a difference.

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Strategies to prevent policy lapses in tough times

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Katrina Ann Church