NEOS has recently welcomed two new senior underwriters to the Queensland and Victorian teams, expanding the national team to 12 and further boosting capacity to meet strong growth in  adviser demand.

Johnny Diep joined the Queensland team earlier this month, bringing with him 19 years’ experience in the industry, including 11 years in underwriting at BT and TAL. He was most recently Principal Underwriter at BT, where he worked for the past eight years, and is well known amongst Queensland advisers.

Gokhan Akyol also joined the Vic/Tas team earlier this month, bringing more than 15 years’ experience in life insurance and underwriting. Prior to NEOS, he worked at AXA, AMP and MetLife across a number of roles, including management. He’s also well known in the Vic/Tas advice community, developing close personal relationships with advisers across the region.

These appointments build on an already impressive team of underwriters, who are not just technical experts but also ‘people persons’ – which is core to the NEOS Experience.

“What really underpins the NEOS Experience is our people,” says NEOS CEO, John de Zwart.

“The only real source of sustainable competitive advantage is culture and the people that lead and make up a business. This is particularly important in an industry such as ours where mostly everything can be copied – including underwriting.

“That’s why we’ve assembled and continue to invest in the team who we can confidently say are the best at what they do in Australia.”

The result is a world-class underwriting experience, with industry-leading turnaround times of 80% of underwriting decisions in three working days – even during the COVID-19 experience.

Importantly, the NEOS approach is not about taking short cuts, or risks on underwriting – it’s simply about doing the right things, more efficiently and therefore arriving at the ultimate decision significantly faster than anyone else.

These appointments will ensure advisers and their clients can continue to count on the NEOS Experience today and into the future.