Getting to know Ashton Jones
Ashton Jones is the Head of Investments, Retirement and New Propositions in our team at TAL and the recipient of the Financial Services Council (FSC) Young Achiever Award for 2018.
Congratulations on your recent win! What do you think contributed to the success of your career so far?
I was lucky to have a comfortable upbringing on the lower north shore of Sydney for much of my early childhood. My dad ran his own small packaging company, and he taught me a great deal about the value of hard work. But when I was still quite young, he was diagnosed with cancer. Between that and the high interest rates of the early 90’s, his company went out of business and our circumstances changed dramatically.
Overall, I think my upbringing motivated me to ensure that my future family would never go through the same financial turmoil and uncertainty. I’m a sensible risk-taker who likes to try new things, but I also want to make sure I can take care of the people and things that are important to me no matter what happens.
That experience clearly made you very ambitious, and you began your career at one of the big four consultancy firms. How does TAL differ from the other companies you’ve worked for?
Yes, I began my career at Deloitte and then moved to Macquarie before joining TAL. This makes me a relative newcomer to the life insurance industry, spending most of my career in superannuation and wealth management. My diverse experience was one of the reasons I was hired – our leadership team wanted a different perspective.
When I compare TAL to those businesses, two things stand out. Firstly, TAL’s key performance indicator is the total amount of claims paid. This talks to a positive financial outcome for our customers more than it does for TAL, and puts our social purpose at the centre of our business. Secondly, I’ve never felt more supported in terms of my personal career goals, and I feel like I can make a real difference to TAL’s ambitions.
How have you done that, in practice?
As Head of Investments, Retirements and New Propositions, my team and I look after TAL’s existing retirement and investment business – these are generally legacy products that either weren’t hugely successful, or products we took on through acquisitions.
Looking at the book strategically, we saw an opportunity to carry out an ambitious program of simplification to make it more stable and simpler to administer. In doing that, we actually gave up a large amount of shareholder value to decrease fees and pay out complex benefits. Not only is this doing the right thing by the customers who own those products or policies, it lays the foundation to expand our propositions more effectively over time. We’ve developed new skills, new expertise and new ways of working to do just that.
On that note, where do you see TAL adding most value for our partners in 5 - 10 years? What are the greatest areas of opportunity?
If you take a look at the superannuation industry in its entirety, there are three major forces shaping it – regulatory scrutiny, technological development, and demographic changes. As more members move from accumulation to retirement, super funds will need to develop new ways of engaging with their members to help them live a comfortable retirement. We have a role to play in helping funds explore the challenges and opportunities through new complementary propositions that extend our protection proposition into retirement.
For instance, we can support funds by helping to protect members against the risk of outliving their superannuation by providing specialist protection products. In the not too distant future, we also plan to offer products that help Australians save for and protect the education of their children and grandchildren.
As a major Australian life insurer, we need to consider how we can best support our changing society to protect what our members will value most in the future. To that end, part of my role is to act as a consultant to funds on these issues – so I’d love to hear from anyone who is interested in speaking about these topics!