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Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter.
As you may be aware, TAL’s long-standing CEO Brett Clark recently moved to a new position as CEO and Managing Director of Asia–Pacific for the Dai-ichi Life Group, TAL’s parent company. With Brett’s departure, we’re delighted to welcome TAL’s new CEO and Managing Director, Fiona Macgregor, who officially took the reins on 1 October.
Since joining TAL in 2014, Fiona has held various leadership positions across innovation, customer, brand and technology, including her most recent roles as Chief Information & Innovation Officer and Chief Executive – Individual Life. Fiona is committed to our strategy to deliver a market-leading, digitally enabled experience for our group insurance partners, and I look forward to sharing more on our future plans in due course.
In another TAL team news, we recently farewelled Ashton Jones, General Manager – Growth, Retirement & Wealth Partnerships, who has accepted a new role externally. This change has provided an opportunity for us to bring the majority of our partner community of together under the banner of Group Partnerships, led by me. We also have Shaun Bransdon, our former Head of Retirement, stepping into the role of General Manager – Retirement & Wealth, who brings a wealth of investment product expertise to our growing Retirement business
Harnessing the power of AI
TAL has embraced the AI revolution – with a focus on moving faster, safely. Since deploying Microsoft’s Copilot platform, we’ve developed a number of AI tools to help us manage insurance applications and claims more efficiently, while ensuring that all member data is protected. Automating routine tasks helps us focus more on delivering a better member experience, and we look forward to developing further AI-driven innovations to support members.
Learn more about TAL's AI approach
Uplifting our data and reporting capabilities
In early 2025 we’ll be transitioning to a new reporting suite, Power BI, which offers enhanced capabilities for self-service reporting. This will give our partners 24/7 access to the latest data insights for their fund, with enhanced visualisations for claims and underwriting. We spoke to Philip O’Connor, TAL’s Enterprise Head of Information Delivery, on how these changes will benefit our partners.
Discover our new data and reporting capabilities
Designing the retirement experience
As more superannuation funds are focusing on developing retirement income solutions for their members, it’s essential to think carefully about the user experience that will support those solutions. In the inaugural edition of the Conexus Retirement Magazine, Jenny Nguyen, TAL’s General Manager – Digital Experience, shared her thoughts on how funds can make sure their retirement propositions will resonate with their retiring members. heir members.
New mental health modules on TAL Insurance Academy
October is Mental Health Month, and we’ve just launched a range of content to help your teams better support members who may be facing mental health challenges. These include a series of modules on responding to disclosures of suicide, as well as modules on communication skills and de-escalation. The modules are available on demand via TAL Insurance Academy.Explore our new mental health modules
Just to let you know, our Sydney office experienced some water damage earlier this week. Our Sydney teams have been advised to work from home from Wednesday 30 October while we assess and rectify the situation. Service levels across our operational teams were maintained as calls were diverted to our Melbourne teams while the Sydney workforce transitioned to work from home, so there was minimal disruption to partners and members. Feel free to reach out to your TAL Partnership team if you have any questions.
On a final note, I look forward to connecting with many of you at this year’s ASFA conference in Sydney on 19–21 November.