William Shakespeare wrote: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Naomi Ballantyne, founder of two New Zealand life insurance companies (to date), and current managing director of Partners Life, which she established in 2010, might be the rare person who qualifies for inclusion in all three categories.
As a female leader in New Zealand financial services, Naomi is almost singular. She is in all likelihood the first woman in the world to have founded not just one but two life insurance companies. There are very few women at the top in Naomi’s industry, and none with the same tenure she holds or respect she commands. She has an unrivalled track record of entrepreneurship and job creation: Partners Life’s 159 full-time staff puts the company in the top 3% of employers in New Zealand by size of workforce.
What is the secret of Naomi’s success? When you hear her speak, two things are clear: no one is more passionate about life risk insurance or knows the industry more intimately, and the story behind the insurance leader is one of the most indelible in New Zealand corporate life.
Family First
Through all of Naomi’s achievements, her family has been by her side, including at work. Naomi’s husband, Kerry, has served as Partners Life’s general manager of HR and is now a senior executive in another insurance-related business, while their 26-year-old son Kris is the company’s executive projects manager. The popular newsletter, Partners Papers, is a product of mother-and-son endeavour. Naomi’s brother Peter, the company’s chief technical officer, has helped her found both her start-ups, and she counts a brother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, two nephews, a nephew’s wife, and two of her cousins’ sons among her employees.
Naomi has spoken of the sometimes difficult times she had as a child with her Canadian father, Garry Lassen, who passed away 13 years ago. Plagued by a long-term back injury that restricted his ability to work, it created an alcohol dependency and affected the family’s finances. He was often hard on Naomi, the only girl among Garry and Evelyn’s five children. Naomi remains very close to her 83-year-old mother, who spent her formative years in Tonga before settling to raise her family on Auckland’s North Shore where Naomi still lives and works. Naomi honours her heritage by participating in Pasifika business events and bringing the family together as often as she can to reconnect over the typical island feasts she loves to cook.
Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Naomi’s career is the accidental nature of its conception. She admits she didn’t even know what insurance was when, at 19, she abandoned a marine biology degree to take on a trainee role at an insurance company. The sharp right turn can only be described as serendipitous, for it led her to become first a founding employee of Sovereign, then a founder of Club Life (now called OnePath Life) before finally establishing Partners Life.
Though she has been feted as a high-achieving woman in business, Naomi has never sought to play up (or play down) her gender in a traditionally male-dominated industry. She has pointed out, though, that as recently as 2001, when she left Sovereign after its sale to ASB, she was “unemployable” as a 35-year-old woman challenging the status quo. At the time, there were no women of Naomi’s age in senior management or on boards of insurance companies. Her response to the stasis of the existing businesses was to set up Club Life and later sell it to ING – not a bad retort.
If It’s Grey, We Will Pay
One of the most striking aspects of Naomi’s approach to her work is that there is no hint of jadedness – she remains as passionate about life risk insurance and its purpose as she was three decades ago. Her fellow leaders at Partners Life, who include pre-eminent Kiwi business leaders such as Sam Knowles and Richard Coon, share her philosophy about the true value of insurance. Partners Life is unique for its ‘If it’s grey . . . We will pay’ and ‘Fair and Reasonable’ claims promises: to always do the right thing for advisers and policyholders at claim time, even in cases where applicants failed to disclose or have misstated a material fact in their application or where the medical evidence does not strictly meet the policy definitions.
This goes to the heart of how Naomi feels about the importance of personal risk protection — from life to health, income, trauma, key person and more — in people’s lives. She says, “Our mission has always been to be able to assist more families with protection in a vastly underinsured market. All of us here at Partners Life are incredibly humbled that we get to go to work every day and pay out large sums of money to New Zealand families and business at times when people are facing serious health issues. To receive the thanks and gratitude from our customers, when we are simply doing our jobs, is incredibly good for the soul.
“We’re also very focused on the independent financial advisers who sell Partners Life policies. They are consumer advocates and many are themselves business owners and employers. Advisers are the bedrock of our industry and are often overlooked, but there is no industry without their expertise.”
There’s no arguing with this strategy: Partners Life currently insures 126,000 lives, has $172 million in annual premiums in force, and to date has raised $115 million in equity. What’s more, Naomi is now developing a company-driven, national adviser awards programme to launch next year. These will celebrate top advisers and will also enable consumers to vote for their adviser to be named the best in the industry.
Away From Her Desk
The question of work-life balance may have no perfect answer, but Naomi has long known how to keep the hurly-burly of life at the top of the business world under control. A competitive hockey team member and long-time trail runner, Naomi says, “There has always been a link between my ability to cope with the stress of leading complex businesses and my involvement in sports and fitness activities. Exercise helps my conscious brain to switch off thinking about issues, and allows new ideas and solutions to pop into my head.
“So many seemingly insurmountable problems have emerged partially or fully resolved as I emerge at the end of a trail run with my two dogs. You need a large degree of resilience to lead start-up businesses to success — the same kind of resilience needed to get back on the trail or hockey pitch following an injury. And dare I say it, being competitive is also necessary to succeed in both business and sport.”
Partners Life | Level 1, 33 – 45 Hurstmere Rd, Takapuna | 0800 14 54 33 | partnerslife.co.nz
Photography: Duncan Innes
