TAL welcomes the Federal Budget’s increased spending on mental health support and focus on legacy life insurance products

Leading life insurance specialist, TAL, welcomes the Australian Government’s planned increase in support and spending on mental health over the next four years and its focus on rationalising legacy life insurance products, as outlined in the Federal Budget 2021-22.

TAL Group CEO & Managing Director, Brett Clark, said, “It is encouraging to see the Government’s commitment to increase support for mental health and to allocate $2.3 billion over the next four years for the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan, including significant investment into prevention and early intervention initiatives.”

TAL welcomes this focus on prevention and early intervention of mental health services, which aligns with TAL’s White Paper on Mental Health and Life Insurance released in 2020, encouraging greater life insurance industry, Government and community alignment and collaboration on mental health support for customers when they need it.

“It is critical to better enable community access to preventative and support services for mental health conditions. We see from our own customers’ experiences that timely access to the right support services can be challenging at times, and that more investment in mental health support services will be of significant benefit to the community. In addition to supporting the Government’s initiatives, TAL is committed to continuing to invest in our ability to support positive mental health outcomes for our customers and the community,” said Mr Clark.

TAL also fully supports the Australian Government’s plans to streamline the rationalisation of legacy life insurance products.

“Life insurance exists to provide support to people during what are often their most difficult times, and TAL welcomes initiatives which enable us to provide customers with products and services that continue to be relevant and respond to their needs. We strongly support the Government’s plan to develop a streamlined mechanism to transfer life insurance customers from old legacy products to products that better suit our customers’ current circumstances and reflect contemporary community expectations.

“Moving customers from legacy products to new products with contemporary definitions and features will be of lasting benefit to customers. Ultimately it will allow life insurers to focus efforts on the service we provide to our customers for better value and with less complexity. We look forward to playing a role alongside Government, regulators and industry to ensure an appropriate mechanism is developed in the best interests of customers.”