TAL Group CEO Fiona Macgregor: Mental health problems growing

Fiona Macgregor says more Australians are permanently leaving the workforce due to mental ill-health than ever before.

TAL chief executive Fiona Mcgregor.

CEO SURVEY 2025: FULL COVERAGE

Economy

How would you rate the momentum of the Australian economy as we head into 2025? Official forecasts have Australia trimming interest rates from the first half of calendar 2025, is that consistent with your view? What are you seeing around inflation in your own business?

Most importantly, we look for signs of how Australians are feeling and coping with economic conditions. We haven’t seen a material uptick in people cancelling their life insurance cover (including living benefits like income protection and critical illness). On the other hand, affordability pressure is certainly there for some customers and, when they come to us for assistance, we’re focused on providing options to help. Life (and living) insurance is an important safety net when you need it, and it’s clear people don’t want to give that up.

Something that is perhaps not well understood is that life insurance isn’t just about death benefits. Last year, 73 per cent of the $4.2bn TAL paid in claims was for living benefits to people dealing with injury or illness that meant they were unable to work for a period of time. This year we have seen some increase in claims volumes, alongside an increase in the proportion of living benefit claims. That’s an important indicator to pay attention to in the national conversation around productivity and the economy. Playing our part to support people through tough times when illness or injury disrupts their lives helps to build community resilience and in turn, productivity.

The cost of doing business is increasing for us. That simply puts more impetus on how we continue to do things faster and better, making best use of the talent and technology available to us in this era.

Outlook

What excites you heading into 2025? Are you likely to increase, hold steady, or trim your investment spend?

Australia’s life insurance industry is important in building more resilient communities, but the reality is many Australians are underinsured and under-protected. Three months into my role as CEO I have plenty of restless energy to direct to how we can reach and help more Australians and be a faster and better business.

That will mean investing, particularly in continuing to improve our customer experience for people making a claim. Claims is the most important thing we do and investments in reducing effort for our customers and people make for very compelling business cases. GenAI isn’t a panacea, but it certainly feels like the right technology for the times.

I’m also excited about our national opportunity to do retirement well. With around five million Australians at or nearing retirement, how people prepare for and manage life after work is intertwined with the nation’s future economic health. Life insurers can help here given our skill-set in managing risk and supporting customers over long-term horizons. It’s a motivating innovation opportunity to support people to move with confidence from a mindset around saving to one of considered spending during their retirement years.

Reform

As we move into an election year, in your mind, what’s the single biggest lever that can/should be used to lift Australia’s competitiveness or productivity? This could be across any area from labour market, tax reform, training or other areas to encourage investment.

Mental health is a critical part of the productivity conversation. Recent claims data from Australia’s life insurers demonstrates the impact mental health is having on individuals, families and on national productivity, showing more Australians are permanently leaving the workforce due to mental ill-health than ever before.

For us, it’s been the leading cause of claims in recent years. Community resilience is at the heart of productivity and our focus is clear – helping people through tough times and their recovery when illness or injury disrupts their lives.

Life insurers have an important role to play in supporting Australians experiencing mental ill health, but we know the issue is bigger than us, and will be focused on working together, with our industry, and across the public and private sectors. This is an important conversation to be had at many levels, with action taken now key to limiting multi-generational impacts.

Technology

Where is your organisation along the AI journey – is it in the developmental stage, or are you now using the technology at scale across your business? If so, are benefits matching the promise?

We have been using simple AI for some time in so-called “RegTech” use cases. It means, for example, we can do 100 per cent quality checking on our new customer calls, creating a feedback loop at scale for our people, which is great for training and coaching to continually improve our customers’ experience with us.

GenAI of course opened up a new set of possibilities. It felt like the golden technology to liberate our teams from back-office complexity, and in many cases the potential is real. It’s helping us to tackle effort in our operations, supporting better customer interactions and faster outcomes.

Through testing and learning, some teams are pushing the technology further. They’re thinking about how to reshape their work and finding time-savings that can be reinvested in more impactful ways to help customers and partners. I’m excited by the potential, it’s an area we will continue to explore and harness.

About TAL

TAL is one of Australia’s leading life insurance specialists. For over 150 years, TAL has been protecting people, not things. Together with its partners, TAL insures more than five million customers and offers life insurance through the following channels: direct to consumer; through a financial adviser; and via group and workplace superannuation schemes. TAL is part of the Dai-ichi Life Group, one of the world’s largest insurance groups. Last financial year we paid $4.2bn billion in claims to 50,128 customers.