Meet our team: Liz Haddow-Allen

For many people, career paths may take a number of different turns along the way. Some people start out in one direction, only to change course when opportunities arise or circumstances change. Making the most of these opportunities to grow and develop can create the greatest rewards – both professionally and personally. 

The diversity of backgrounds and breadth of experience within our Partnerships Team is a strength that enables our foundation of service excellence. We believe that this is made possible through a collaborative relationship and our people are at the heart of this.  

Supporting members when they need it most 

We recently spoke with Liz Haddow-Allen, Senior Partnerships Manager supporting Rest, about her unique background and what drives her in her role.   Liz shared that she came to account management through a slightly unusual path. “I started my career as an occupational therapist and rehabilitation counsellor,” she said. “At the start I would never have imagined I would end up working in life insurance, but in hindsight it was the perfect foundation to the work I do today.

“My background in rehabilitation means I know firsthand what it takes for members on claim to get their lives back on track. It’s something I always have top of mind when working with and supporting the Rest team. When the unexpected happens, we help members with much more than just payments. We’re here to support them and do whatever it takes to help them achieve their best possible state of health and wellbeing. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in that.”

Contributing to industry thought leadership 

At the end of last year, Liz was awarded the prestigious Australian Life Underwriting and Claims Association (ALUCA) Turks Life Insurance Scholarship. Now in its 16th year, the ALUCA Turks Scholarship is designed to support the professional growth of ALUCA and its members by providing a significant career development opportunity for professionals working in the life insurance industry. Entrants are asked to submit a paper addressing a key industry topic. 

Liz chose to focus her paper on the impact of stapling. “Given the nature of my role in the Partnerships Team at TAL, I am very interested in understanding the impact of legislative and regulatory change on our partners and their members, particularly with the volume of change over the last few years in our industry,” she said. "This was a great opportunity for me to really research and understand perspectives from various sources on the impact of stapling changes, as well as the effectiveness and challenges in implementing the changes in practice.  

“Member engagement is a big challenge for group insurance, and with legislative and regulatory changes over the past few years, it has become even more important for members to make educated choices. I wanted to explore possible solutions to this challenge along with strategies for our industry in engaging members to be better informed about choices in relation to their super and insurance.”  

Gaining a global perspective

As part of the award, Liz was able to choose a trip to one of three life insurance conferences in the United States. She returned from the trip earlier this year, full of enthusiasm and ready to share what she’d learnt. 

“It was great to hear ways that insurers in the US have used behavioural economics insights, such as Nudge Theory, to review the language in member communications to drive better member outcomes and to better set expectations for members. This really resonated with me as my paper explored a behavioural economics framework as a basis for exploring opportunities for better member engagement with insurance in superannuation”. 

“Interestingly there were some common themes among insurers across the globe, with the impact of COVID particularly in relation to claims top of mind for everyone regardless of location,” she shared. 

Insights that Liz drew from her experience included:  

• Health support teams in the US are being trained to have conversations with customers about the financial benefits of engaging in work, specific to their policy conditions, where previously only health benefits had been discussed. This was found to have a positive impact on the customer’s willingness to job seek or retrain.
• The evolving work opportunities available in the US in a post-Covid environment were discussed. An example was given of a fast-food company that set up employees to work remotely, taking drive-through takeaway orders from their home office! It will be interesting to see how the evolving post-Covid job landscape will impact future product and legal requirements when considering employability.