Report on the MAS Annual General Meeting 2021

MAS's Annual General Meeting for 2021 was held online on 25 August.

We thank all those Members who attended the meeting, and who cast votes on the various resolutions. We appreciate the views of our Members and we are grateful to them for setting aside the time to contribute to the future of our mutual.

The meeting opened with Chairman Harley Aish taking Members through the Annual Report and offering his thoughts on some of the highlights of the 2020-21 Financial Year, and what MAS will focus on in the year ahead. 

The meeting then heard from Jenny Gill, Chair of the MAS Foundation Trustees, who reported on the MAS Foundation's activities over the past year, including the work it has done on refining its funding strategy. 

The second half of the meeting was taken up with discussion of the proposed resolutions, which you can read about in more detail in the Notice of Meeting. 

All of the resolutions were approved:

• The minutes of the 2020 AGM were accepted.
• The 2021 Annual Report and Financial Statements were approved.
• The remuneration to be divided among all the directors of MAS increased from $710,000 per annum to $746,000 per annum. 
• Brendan O'Donovan was appointed as Commercial Trustee.
• Dr Doug Hill was appointed as Practitioner Trustee.

Income Protection policies and mental health

At last year's AGM, questions were raised by several Members regarding how Life and Income insurers consider mental health in their underwriting and claims assessment, including how this may unfairly impact women. 

There are many complicating factors to how insurers consider mental health. However, MAS is committed to evolving our approach, so we have engaged Chnnl to undertake a comprehensive piece of research to understand perceptions of mental health, how MAS might create a better application and assessment process, and how MAS might include primary, secondary and tertiary treatment of mental health in its approach to Life and Income insurance. 

This research is in progress.