Ballantyne announces her future plans
Following the sale of Partners Life to Dai-ichi, founder and managing director Naomi Ballantyne outlines her future plans.
Friday, May 26th 2023, 11:40AM 
4 Comments
Partners Life founder and managing director Naomi Ballantyne is to retire after the end of March 2024.
Dai-ichi bought Partners Group Holdings for $1 billion in August 2022.
In a video sent to Partners' insurance advisers, Ballantyne assured them she hadn't been pushed by Dai-ichi.
“Before anyone speculates that my departure has been encouraged in some by by Dai-ichi Life,” she said she expects to undertake some consulting work for the global Dai-ichi Life business after she steps down.
The Japan-based company has been “incredible accommodating and supportive of my decision … I could not be more impressed with them as an owner,” she said.
The sale had securred Partners Life “as a forever company” and she is confident she is leaving the company “in the safest of hands,” Ballantyne said.
She has spent 41 years in New Zealand's life insurance industry, 35 of them spent starting and building three of the country's largest life insurance companies including 12 years at Partners Life.
The other two companies are Sovereign and Club Life, now called OnePath Life.
“I have loved every minute of my career in an industry that does great things for New Zealanders without any fanfare and I am so proud of the positive changes to the industry that have arisen because of the competition I have brought to the table,” Ballantyne said.
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Comments from our readers
Hopefully the new up and coming leaders of insurers will similarly create competition and innovate for benefit to customers, advisers and insurers.
The early cohort of leaders at Sovereign seem to have been an amazing bunch with the likes of Naomi, Chris Coon and Ian Hendry taking a moribund industry with lazy ineffective players such as AMP and driving change with services and products that meet customer needs, offering choice and supporting independent advice and challenging things. Just contemplate what we would be like without the changes driven by the Sov cohort.
This continued with Chris setting up Sentinel & Cove and Naomi setting up Club / Onepath / now part of Chubb.
Barry’s analogy is well meaning but we should not forget Mt Rushmore was taken off indigenous peoples and desecrated. So it is not a great analogy.
Naomi without you the insurance industry would not be what it is today. Thanks to you policy holders around New Zealand now have markedly superior benefits applied their policies. You drove the industry forward encouraging competition, innovation and returning focus back to the customer. It was so refreshing to meet someone like yourself in the financial services industry who just got it. You have done so much for the adviser community also over the years.
On behalf of my clients who have claimed on their policies and seen first-hand the financial benefit of having cover in place thank you.
We need more insurance knowledge at the top of insurance companies otherwise we will see more destruction as we saw with bankers running AMP.
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