IVF loan adverts spark fury in New Zealand

Kiwis who've struggled to conceive are up in arms over ASB's new ad offering loans for IVF treatment. But why do would-be parents have to pay in the first place? Adam Dudding reports.
WHEN HE first saw the slickly sentimental new ad from ASB bank offering loans for fertility treatment, Roger Gray was ironing his work shirts. He was so shocked he almost dropped the iron.

"I thought it was disgusting," says the Auckland father-of-three, two of whose children were born with the help of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). "To me, it was exploitative of people who are in a desperate situation."

Gray and his wife went through their fertility treatment in Australia, where couples receive government subsidies that slash the cost of IVF to around $2000 per "cycle" for an unlimited number of cycles. In New Zealand would-be parents are fully funded for just one or two attempts, the waiting lists can be long, and eligibility depends on a stringent set of criteria. And outside the public system, they face spending $10,000-$12,000 of their own money per attempt. Private health insurers don't cover IVF (except, curiously, through one scheme offered only to employees of NZ Police).

"The government system here of restricting the number of opportunities to publicly fund IVF is not good," said Gray. "And then ASB is taking advantage of this to make money out of desperate people. I think it showed the worst side of banking."

Gray was just one of several parents with an insider's knowledge of fertility treatment who told the Sunday Star-Times they were uneasy, or even angry, about the 60-second IVF ad, in which a photogenically mopey couple struggling to conceive sell their vintage car to fund IVF, and then when that fails borrow ASB money for another cycle which culminates in triplets. The ad, which ASB says is based on the "real life" experiences of customers, is part of a major rebranding of the bank that seems set on portraying ASB not so much as a large Australian bank that lends and borrows money in exchange for interest, but as a quasi-benevolent organisation focused on "creating futures", and perhaps creating the odd set of triplets.

By Thursday afternoon, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) had received seven complaints about the ad, which first screened last Sunday, on the grounds that it was socially irresponsible, exploited a vulnerable audience or encouraged an unrealistic expectation of a successful outcome to fertility treatment.

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