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An ASX-listed provider of insurance, banking, and wealth-management products and services is taking an approach of “aggressive transparency” about the wide range of financial brands it owns in a new online initiative.
Suncorp's new move owns to the fact that the industry giant owns 11 different brands in Australia including AAMI, Bingle, GIO, and APIA.
Pip Marlow, Suncorp's CEO of customer marketplace, said the new app, part of the group's “marketplace” strategy, would bring together a single view of all the products consumers held with Suncorp, and include links to businesses owned by other parties, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The Suncorp app also includes a budgeting tool to help consumers track spending, chat bots for answer simple customer queries, and links to other businesses that may be relevant to customers, such as those in conveyancing, car maintenance, or removalists.
Marlow said the group was also making similar changes in its stores and call centres.
"How do we expose the entire group to our customers with a level of, aggressive transparency, I guess, to make sure we can really tell our customers everything and show them everything? And that's what comes through in the marketplace strategy," Marlow told the publication.
A recent Productivity Commission's draft inquiry into financial services, however, warned that in insurance especially, the wide range of brands owned by a few players created "the illusion of more competition than actually exists,” and called for greater transparency about which insurers underwrite products.
In response to the report, Suncorp said it was working on greater transparency of brand ownership, and that the brands it owns had different features and benefits, and were targeted at different market segments, SMH reported.
