IT WAS SO GOOD to see so many of you at our year opening Life Matters seminars last month on “5 Traits of Sustainable Claims Decisions”. It took some doing getting all these busy Turks presenters in the one place at the one time, but it was such a thrill to present with such a knowledgeable team of life experts and I hope you all found it as fun and rewarding as we all did. Please drop me a line if you missed out on receiving a copy of the PowerPoint presentation.

All this seems a lifetime ago now when talking to you all face to face was just a given. As I write this, I, like many of you I suspect, am working remotely.

We are lucky at Turks in that long ago, we invested in the systems to unchain our people from their work desks so in most ways it is BAU. There are still challenges of course, however as I say to our team here, we are the fortunate ones as we continue to be able to do work we love in the safety of our homes when so many Australians do not have such health and work security. Overwhelmingly, our thoughts are with those doing it tough right now, many of whom are of course members or insureds of our clients. These are frightening and anxious times and many of us feel powerless and possibly isolated. My tip? Keep talking to each other by any means, (but mostly by phone), as it is amazing how keeping in touch with each other lifts the spirits in dark times.

I hope you like our first edition of the Life Insurance Bulletin for 2020. We start with some vital updates on how our courts and tribunals are responding to COVID-19. We are getting a lot of questions about this so I hope this article answers all these. More generally, you will see there is still a lot going on in life insurance with the life relevant FSRC legislative reform and UCT moving ever closer to law and a start date. As always, there is also plenty of life cases of interest. Finally, you will also see that AFCA has adopted a new position with respect to the interpretation of trauma terms that all trauma insurers will need to grapple with.

Please call/email me, or any one of our Turks experts if you would like to talk about any of the pieces in this edition (we love hearing from you!). I can truly say we have all had a hand in producing this one, so pick your fav expert and don’t hold back.

Hope to see you all in person soon and in the meantime, stay safe (and wash your hands regularly).