As the managing director of our biggest insurance company, Naomi Ballantyne believes that she does good for New Zealanders even though many of us think insurance policies are a "major ripoff".
"I just hope the people who choose not to insure 'cause they think all of those things never have to experience the desperation that [comes] when bad things happen and they can't financially get out of it," she tells Susie Ferguson.
Naomi Ballantyne - founder/chief executive of the life insurance company Partners Life Photo: Bruce Jarvis
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Growing up poor on Auckland's North Shore with a Samoan/ Tongan mother, a Canadian father and four siblings, there was no talk of insurance because the family didn't have it, Ballantyne says.
She learnt about the industry herself after taking a job as a management trainee in her early 20s. At 24, she was the founding employee of Sovereign Insurance and 12 years ago founded Partners Life.
Now the largest insurance company in New Zealand, Partners Life was sold to Japanese life insurance company Dai-ichi Life for NZ$1 billion last year.
As a successful start-up, Partners Life was ready to move beyond New Zealand, she says, and the timing of Dai-ichi Life's offer was "like manna from heaven".
In 2023, New Zealand's life insurance companies have many women in senior positions, but that wasn't the case when Ballantyne first got into the game.
As a young woman in the "very old-school and male-dominated" insurance sector of the 1990s, she was told New Zealand didn't need a new life insurance company – and that she didn't "look the part" of a business leader anyway.
"As a young woman growing up as a tomboy I thought it was me [and that] I didn't know how to dress appropriately… It nearly did my head in, honestly. I got very depressed about it.
"It took another woman, an image consultant, to go 'honey, there's nothing wrong with you' [and then] for me to go 'oh it's not actually the way I'm dressing.
"As with anything in life, there are pockets of people who still behave that way but I don't think as an industry we behave that way at all."
Ballantyne feels lucky for the example set by her "superhero" mother who cut lawns with a machete, cooked the best food ever and played sports with her kids until her 50s.
"I was extremely fortunate to grow up not thinking girls have a place and they can't do things. That has shaped my whole world.
"I'm lucky enough to be similar to that but she wasn't celebrated for it other than in my heart and head."
In any industry, entrepreneurs are the people willing to try things that haven't been done before with no guarantee that they'll work, she says.
This requires a mixture of confidence and the ability to brave terror.
"There's this confidence that you have to have in yourself to keep going, despite the criticism and mistakes you make.
"On the other hand because no one has ever done it before you have this absolute terror that you are going to make the biggest mistake ever…
"It's like being torn in half every time you have to make a decision but I think the bravery it takes to make the call is the thing that actually sets entrepreneurs apart."
Ballantyne was impressed when the New Zealand government encouraged people to think about the value of insurance last year via the now-paused income insurance scheme yet the scheme itself was not well-structured, she says.
"For the first time in my whole career the government saying 'insurance is a good thing in these circumstances' is amazing and also that employees should support their employees in that way. That's amazing.
"The structure of the scheme was not amazing. It was really sad to me and the industry… that we do this day and day out and we weren't involved in helping them to understand the cost of [employers offering that insurance].
"For example, employers have to pay FBT [Fringe Benefit Tax] on health and disability schemes for their employees so they don't do that.
"It would have been really easy for the government to say 'we'll take the FBT off that' and that would encourage employers to do the sorts of things they were thinking about doing."
The income insurance scheme was a missed opportunity but Ballantyne is hopeful for further public conversation about the role and value of insurance.
She hears a lot of people complaining about the fact that insurance companies are for-profit but says this is what enables companies like Partners Life to offer their customers long-term security.
People forced to claim on health and life insurance policies are often "desperately, desperately grateful" that financial support is there when they need it, Ballantyne says.