BT Financial Group has won the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and Strategic Insight Life Company of the Year award for the second consecutive year.

The runners up were TAL, MLC and OnePath. BT also took out the income protection award.

TAL won the service quality award, beating Zurich, AIA Australia and BT. OnePath won the temporary permanent disability and trauma awards.

The other big winner was CommInsure, which took the innovation, investment bond and annuity awards.

Challenger won the annuity provider and long-term income stream awards.

The awards are based on independent quantitative research conducted by Strategic Insight, with each life insurer’s performance being assessed and benchmarked against their peers.

Strategic Insight Head of Sales, Marketing and Product Development Rael Solomon says the retail life insurance market continues to be driven by a high level of competition between all insurers.

“This is resulting in innovation in not only products, but also in aspects of underwriting, customer service and adviser training,” he said.

“Health and wellness has become a major theme and is already playing a part in the benchmarking Strategic Insight applies to providers and their products.”

Zurich was the winner of two of the three AFA/Beddoes Institute Client Service Team Awards, which are based on surveys of nearly 2000 advisers by the institute. Zurich took out the underwriting award and business support award categories, while BT won the claims award.

Asteron was runner-up in the underwriting category, OnePath in the claims sector and AMP in business support.