ADVISER PROFILE

Adviser’s first-hand experience of insurance changing lives

Shaun Vining’s brother, Blair, wouldn’t have been able to enact huge changes to New Zealand’s health system without his insurance.

Former teacher and now Queenstown financial adviser Shaun Vining didn’t take much convincing to move into insurance. “I’d been teaching for 20 years and then one of the parents came to me and said ‘if you don’t want to be teaching anymore you’d be great at this … everyone trusts you, you’re great with people’. Two weeks later I said ‘let’s do it’.”

Vining said, while he loved teaching, it was hard to survive on a teacher’s salary in Queenstown with a mortgage and four children.

BY SUSAN EDMUNDS

“I could move to Invercargill or I could get another job. I got another job.”

While he got into the insurance industry with a view to becoming more financially secure and helping local families, it was two years later, in 2018, that the importance of what he was doing really hit home.

His brother, Blair, who was one of his first clients, became his first claim. He had a rare bowel cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes, lungs and liver, without having had any major symptoms.

He was told he would not see a specialist in the public system for eight weeks – but he had only eight to 10 weeks to live.

Blair Vining had health insurance through an employer group scheme that enabled him to get an appointment with a specialist through the private health system quickly, but it provided only $10,000 of cover for the non-Pharmac medication he needed. The drugs cost $35,000 for one month alone. That meant he had to tap into his life and trauma cover, which had been intended to pay down debt.

But Shaun Vining said the insurance money paid for drugs that extended his

“Now I have seen what having it in place can do – it can change everything. It now has a total different meaning for me.”

“I’ve seen people not covered and it’s devastating. Givealittle pages set up because people didn’t have $10 a week insurance to cover this type of thing.”

life by almost another year, and allowed him to make major changes to the New Zealand health landscape in the process.

Blair Vining set out on a mission to reform the New Zealand health system to provide better care for people suffering from cancer. More than 25,000 people followed his Facebook page “Blair Vining’s Epic Journey” as he strived to make a difference – having realised that rather than being the outlier he had thought he was, his story was very common.

He was the force behind the development now under way of a charity hospital in Southland, which will provide healthcare for those living in the region who would otherwise be unable to access treatment through the private or public systems. A building has been found and donated for the hospital to use and a “buy a brick” campaign is running to raise $500,000 needed to get the hospital build started as soon as August.

As a result of Blair Vining’s campaigning, the Government set out a New Zealand Cancer Action Plan including allocating $60 million for Pharmac for cancer medications, the establishment of a cancer control agency and the appointment of a director of cancer control. His petition to create a national cancer agency was signed by more than 140,000 New Zealanders. Vining said the extra time his brother had because of his insurance cover had changed New Zealand society forever.

“Now I have seen what having it in place can do – it can change everything. It now has a total different meaning for me.”

Vining said the shift from salary-based teaching to the commission structure of insurance “freaked me out” at first. “There wasn’t much money coming in from the Ministry of Education but I knew it was coming every two weeks.”

He had a “side hustle” as an MC for corporate events and as lead singer and guitarist in a band that does corporate events around New Zealand. “When I was teaching I was having to do it every Friday and Saturday, now I can pick and choose when I want to do it … it’s still freaky living month to month by commission … it’s not until now that the renewal coming in is a bit more and each month there’s a bit more being added to the pot.”

Moving from teaching to running a business had been a learning curve, he said, and had required investment in himself to make sure he was doing it properly “not just selling insurance”.

That was a change that was likely to have to happen across the industry with the introduction of the new financial advice regime. “You have to run a proper business now. I set aside time each week to go through stuff, policies and processes.

“It’s needed for the industry. There are still too many cowboys out there. It’s good from that perspective, for making people realise we are running a business not just going out there and selling a product and onto the next thing, we’re building a business and building a reputation.

“The regulatory stuff happening will make people feel more secure in looking at it, it’s consumers being looked after not the company making money.”

The Covid-19 lockdown had spurred an increase in interest in insurance, he said, as people realised they wanted policies in place to protect their families – even though the policies issued at the time were unlikely to provide any cover for Covid. “I was busier during lockdown than I had been at any time in my business career … now everyone is back to work trying to catch up it’s getting a bit more difficult.”

Queenstown was still bustling, he said, and there was an increase in attention on spending local and supporting local businesses. Vining himself had been affected by the pandemic because about 40% of his existing client base is Brazilian people who had decided to go back home. “The clawbacks from insurance companies are hitting now. When you lose 20% of your business overnight it can make it a bit rough.”

Most of the new clients he had lined up to meet with in the near future were also Brazilian. “Previously I thought if 20% or 30% of them didn’t turn out to be anything it would still be my best year yet but it’s all dried up.”

Vining isn’t deterred, though. He said he wanted to make it clear that he was not an “old school” insurance broker – and insurance did not have to be dry and boring.

“I really enjoy working with families, that’s my main niche. I was teaching for 20 years, primary and early childcare, looking after families is my main thing.”

With each client meeting, he would talk about how a family would cope if one of their income-earners was no longer in work, and how they would maintain their lifestyle and look after their children. “Making sure families are protected. I’ve seen people not covered and it’s devastating. Givealittle pages set up because people didn’t have $10 a week insurance to cover this type of thing.”

Having seen first-hand the impact that insurance has on a family, Vining said his big goal was to see every family in New Zealand have life and trauma cover. “Everyone can afford life insurance.

“[Blair] was only 38 when he [was diagnosed]. It makes a huge difference. If he hadn’t had it, he would have been gone in eight weeks, not a year later.” A