How iSelect Adds Value
iSelect's business objective is to help its customers, more easily, make informed purchase decisions in the area of personal financial products like health insurance and life insurance.
In reality we take consumers through a simple process to basically ensure we understand their needs. Take a customer requiring health insurance as an example.
The customer is first asked by a trained consultant or answers online a series of questions to allow iSelect to understand the persons needs, wants and other requirements.
This information is then matched against products that iSelect has in its product database. Usually, such products are scored on a benefit by benefit basis. Products are then shortlisted based on how well they match the customer's stated needs and a recommendation is made to the consumer.
Once the consumer chooses the product he or she wishes to purchase from the short list, iSelect helps to also make the purchase process as simple and efficient as possible.
For its efforts, iSelect receives a commission paid by the product provider (the health insurer). This commission is generally a percentage of the insurer's base premium. The actual commission rate does not represent our profit margin as it also reimburses iSelect for administrative and other expenses we incur in providing our services, including marketing, data entry, contact centre operations, compliance, and so on. Importantly, our commission does not alter the price the consumer pays for their health cover.
iSelect - How we advise
iSelect is in the business of helping customers make informed purchase decisions. Our aim to deliver advice that is in the best interests of our customers. As such we have processes and staff training programs whose objective is to separate the commercial requirements of the business from our advisory side.
We are not owned by any fund and our satisfaction derives from finding the product that suits our customers needs. We have processes in place to ensure that our recommendations to consumers are appropriate. By appropriate we mean that the product meets the consumers stated requirements, needs and budget, based upon information as provided to iSelect by the consumer. The processes we use over the phone or on our website enable us to deliver consistent and appropriate advice.
The Recommendation Process
Consistently and appropriately advising consumers on the appropriate product for their needs and budget is a core and fundamental focus of iSelect. This recommendation process is supported by ongoing activities that come together to allow delivery of our advice online or via our contact centre. Some of these activities are:
Product Research:
Collection of product data, description of product benefits, scoring of product benefits across multiple product providers and price levels.
Needs Analysis/Fact Find:
Developing an understanding of a consumers’ situation and likes and dislikes.
Product Recommendation:
Matching a consumers stated needs against product benefits to find products appropriate for their needs and budget.
The systems that deliver our advice have been developed in-house by iSelect and an Australian Patent has been awarded to this system known as Customer Decision Support (Patent number 2001261922).
All of these processes work together in a framework of compliance, audits, smart use of technology and product and sales training to make sure that appropriate advice is consistently provided.
