NZ's largest locally owned life insurer champions adviser learning and good outcomes for customers

The transformation is enabled by the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform that will not only help deliver improved experiences and good outcomes for customers; it will drive better innovation, productivity and support for the company’s independent adviser partners. In particular, a new learning management system — Learning HQ — and event management system — Events HQ — are helping advisers stay up to date with their required product training and certifications.

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Committed to excellence

As part of Fidelity Life's commitment to good customer outcomes, the company wanted advisers to have a comprehensive understanding of their products. Trecia Brown, Head of Professional Development at Fidelity Life, comments,

"We needed to ensure advisers have confidence and knowledge about all our products so they’re able to provide the best advice and good outcomes for customers."

Previous training systems and processes caused challenges, including the lack of a single source of truth and lost time due to inefficiencies. There was no easy way to assess adviser knowledge or view reports about training status.

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Selecting the tech

To help advisers become fully accredited and confidently recommend Fidelity Life’s products, we identified essential requirements:

2500 advisers needed to be able to access training plans/courses easily.

The ability to run and manage events.

The setup needed to cover a range of scenarios — from course enrollment/unenrollment, self-enrollment, course completion and new/removed users.

Current accreditations needed to be recorded in a central, easily accessible system.

LMS365, a Microsoft based learning platform, was selected as the platform of choice to create and manage course content. An integration into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and D365 Marketing with Event Management enabled email invites to be sent, adviser training status updates and real-time reporting.

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Online learning at the right time

Advisers can now log into Learning HQ and access courseware. As they complete courses and accreditation, automatic updates happen in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. Dashboards display course completion and provide visibility over courses. Brown comments,

“The combination of D365 with LMS365 gives us access to advisers’ learning records almost immediately — it’s information we need to see in real-time, and this solution delivers just that!”

The integration between Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and LMS365 is made possible by Microsoft Power Automate; it ensures Customer Engagement is the single source of truth around advisers' training status. Events HQ also allows advisers to see the upcoming training sessions they could attend.

With COVID-19 leading to uncertainty about hosting in-person events, an online platform has offset the risk of falling behind due to cancelled events. Leigh Bennett, Product Training Manager at Fidelity Life elaborates,

"It's given us a chance to talk about products with advisers without needing to see them face to face. Everyone can keep up, and a consistent message has been delivered — which is really important."

With 11 courses currently available, Learning HQ will make it much easier to continue creating new training courses and events. Bennett says of the growth,

"We're releasing another five courses in the coming months. We plan to continually and consistently add to that bank of courses."

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Digital-first

The new LMS is part of Fidelity Life's broader whole-of-business transformation. Brown explains the approach,

"Our transformation is underpinned by a significant investment in a new D365 platform which will eventually allow us to leave our legacy systems behind. Our technology vision is to be simple, digital and flexible, and for advisers, this means more innovation, productivity and support as we continually look for ways to improve our overall adviser proposition."

The approach has created cost and time savings. Brown shares,

"It's meant reduced travel time (and costs) around the country. We look at sustainable investment — and this is an investment for the long term."

And whilst in-person and online events still happen in tandem to meet advisers’ individual preferences, Brown highlights the benefit of a growing pool of resources in Learning HQ.

"It’s become a great library of knowledge that we've never had before, and the reporting means we know the level of advisers’ knowledge has increased."

What's more, the new approach fits in with the new ways of working developed over the past year. As Bennett comments,

"Advisers can learn and engage with us in their own time and make it work with their schedule; they're not constrained to 9-5 anymore. This is valuable time that can be reinvested with customers."

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Investing in good customer outcomes

Fidelity Life’s Learning HQ has all the advantages: it’s adviser centric, easy to use and offers the advisers a premium learning path, with easy access to training, certification and records. All of this leads to increased adviser knowledge and better customer outcomes. Says Bennett,

"Advisers have training at their fingertips and don't need to wait for a training session anymore to brush up on knowledge; it's all there for them. Having easy access to the latest information, relevant to the customer they're talking to, is essential."

With time and cost savings, improved visibility and reporting over adviser training and certification status, and high-quality information provided by advisers, it’s ultimately customers who reap the benefits. Brown closes,

"We firmly believe in the value of financial advice and working in partnership with advisers to deliver good customer outcomes. Continually investing in our broader adviser proposition and making it easier for them to do business with Fidelity Life is part and parcel of this commitment."