Digital point of sales solutions for life insurance continue to become more innovative. I am trying to keep up. The auto-fulfillment process for applying for life insurance is all about data and getting an instant underwriting decision. While we all want instant underwriting decisions, the impaired risk business is not going away. There are new enhancements regarding Electronic Health Records (EHR), and lab testing for COVID. The Internet of Things (IOT) is now playing a role in personal wellness that will affect underwriting in the future.
Point-of-Sale Instant Underwriting Decisions and Data Prefill
SCOR’s Velogica® helps protect families by facilitating easily acquired life insurance at affordable prices while digitally integrating the most advanced evidence sources. Using a patented process to deliver instant underwriting decisions, the Velogica algorithm helps major clients drive new models of efficient distribution through predictive risk assessment and point-of-sale policyholder capture by correlating information from the life insurance application, motor vehicle reports, MIB reports and prescription drug history and other data sources. Velogica is designed with flexibility to incorporate new data sources as they become available.
The most recent release of Velogica integrates SCOR’s predictive analytics capabilities and electronic health records scores and offers powerful data visualization and analytics functions that allow for strong case management and tracking. With more than four million life insurance applications processed, this proven platform has a record of achievement that is unmatched in the industry.
Ash Brokerage, Ameritas and SCOR recently announced a new next-generation term life insurance product, Ash Instant term issued by Ameritas Life Insurance Corp. Ash Instant term is an example of how Velogica’s solution for point-of-sale life insurance combines reinsurance and product development. Ash developed the frontend journey for Ash Instant term and Velogica is the underwriting engine that supports it. This innovative digital product is available to Ash advisors through the Ash Term Express platform.
“We were excited to partner with ASH Brokerage and Ameritas to assist in the development of Ash Instant term. This digital product offers one of the best automation rates in the market while it maintains very competitive prices,” explains Richard De Sousa, senior vice president, deputy head of Growth and Development at SCOR. “Qualified applicants can confirm receipt of coverage within 15 minutes in either an agent-assisted or self-serve fully digital environment.”
LexisNexis® Life Data Prefill is an interactive single-inquiry solution that streamlines the insurance process at the point of application, reducing the time and cost of capturing data to evaluate applicants. With just a name, address and date of birth, Life Data Prefill can help prefill other important application data in near real-time. This solution reduces the number of questions that need to be asked, minimizes mis-keys and enhances the overall customer experience. Life Data Prefill can help easily reduce Not in Good Order rates, minimize errors and prefill information that is often incorrectly entered. Completing the application more accurately the first time helps reduce customer follow-up so that agents can better place policies in a more efficient manner, carriers can speed up the application process and underwriters can better evaluate risk.
LexisNexis® Risk Solutions also just released four new enhancements to Life Data Prefill that add additional value at the point of sale by providing an even more improved experience for the insurer and agency/broker. The four optional enhancements to Life Data Prefill include:
- Criminal and Bankruptcy Flags, which can be used by insurers to reduce critical application omissions related to criminal and/or bankruptcy records, determining a more appropriate applicant path.
- A Persistency Indicator, used by insurers and agents to identify the potential for early lapse and increase consumer satisfaction.
- A Family History Flag, used by insurers and agents to reduce application omissions related to premature family deaths and determine a more appropriate path for the applicant.
- An Accelerated Indicator, designed for agents, to provide a likelihood that the applicant will progress through accelerated underwriting programs.
All of these new Life Data Prefill enhancements provide point-of-sale data points that enable carriers and agents to approach the underwriting process with more confidence, while simultaneously increasing placement and retention ratios.
EHR, Latest on Labs for COVID, and Personal Health Scoring
I followed up with vendors to find out what they were doing and found that Human API had evolved their solution into a Health Intelligence Platform that connects carriers and distributors and converts health data into actionable information that drives faster underwriting decisioning. All of this is of course aimed at ultimately improving the consumer buying experience and increasing placement rates.
Human API’s new platform has different layers of capabilities designed to make it easy for carriers and distributors to get started with using EHR data. It’s powered by a data network which is a source of raw health data that feeds the platform that converts data into meaningful information. The reporting capabilities then transform this information into contextual knowledge that underwriters can leverage to make their decisions faster. Finally, the analytics layer provides insights to continuously optimize the performance and impact of the Health Intelligence Platform.
Human API is now connected to all electronic health records (EHR) data sources via direct EHR networks (Epic Chart Gateway and Veradigm), public networks like CommonWell Health Alliance, regional health information exchanges (HIEs), and their proprietary patient portal network, in addition to traditional APS vendor partners. It’s now possible to get health data through their platform via a HIPAA authorization or with patient portal credentials. They informed me that these new data integrations along with their Smart Orchestration capabilities which automatically order medical evidence from the best available data source are consistently powering hit rates above 50 percent for their carrier customers (a milestone for our industry). This is a signal that life insurance is really starting to make the transition on the digital transformation journey since there are platforms like Human API that are enabling health data access and useability.
Their new Health Intelligence Platform brings full stack data capabilities under one solution, from access to normalization to customer reporting and analytics. Historically a lot of these data capabilities had to be purchased from different vendors and stitched together, so they designed their platform to make it easy to both retrieve and use health data and expand the utility of EHRs beyond an APS replacement. All the data on Human API’s platform is normalized and feeds a custom reporting engine that creates unique reports tailored to underwriting needs. For example, carriers can triage blind spots with a report that screens for key conditions, or avoid labs and exams with a “Health Check” report. This makes the information within EHRs useful and customizable, reducing the need to manually review all the pages in the records. With the launch of their new platform, they’re making the APS an exception rather than the norm for a lot of their customers.
Additionally, the platform enables distributors and carriers to easily share records with one another for more transparency. Distributors are able to keep their applicants updated on the status of their cases as it moves through underwriting. This single view into the process is not only creating a better experience for customers but also enabling better collaboration between carriers and distributors.
While we looked at medical records, let’s now pivot to labs and the latest in COVID testing. In addition to initial COVID-19 strains, variants such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, are now creating concerns of resurgence in the U.S. According to a New York Times report, overall deaths from COVID remain around 1.6 percent, which the CDC indicates is a staggering 100 times that of the combined total of influenza and pneumonia.
While even vaccinated individuals are being infected, the CDC indicates that breakthrough infection rates, as well as hospitalization rates for breakthrough infections, are 1/10th that of the infection and hospitalization rate among unvaccinated individuals. This is good news for the vaccinated; however, not all vaccines are created equally, and none are 100 percent effective.
In fact, effectiveness rates among the top three vaccines range from 66 percent to 94.1 percent. This means as many as three out of every 10 vaccinated individuals will not develop the antibodies capable of neutralizing the COVID-19 virus. The only way to really know if a vaccination is effective is to get a test that identifies neutralizing antibodies post vaccination, such as the ImmunoRank Neutralization Assay offered by MediPro Direct.
MediPro Direct also offers a COVID-19 Titer test three to six months post-vaccination, which will identify the number of neutralizing antibodies remaining in an individual’s body. This result indicates whether a booster shot for COVID-19 is necessary for that individual. Results from these tests help individuals and organizations manage risk and better account for mortality rates by identifying the “truly” vaccinated.
I have an Apple Watch, iPhone, Withings Digital Blood Pressure Kit and Scale, plus health and workout Apps. These are all IOT devices capturing health and wellness data. I discovered a White Paper by dacadoo called “Health Scoring and The Personalization of Risk.” It had been developed in conjunction with a Data Science team to bring to life the tangible outcomes of Health Scoring technology. The results can be significant for healthcare expenditure savings. They also explore how new personalization efforts in life or health insurance can combine new technologies and correlative analysis techniques that leverage Big Data to deliver real-time customization of offerings, content, and customer experience at an individual level. There are a lot of important statistics in the report. A simple example is how adding an additional 1,850 steps to your daily activity can translate into hundreds of dollars of healthcare savings, which is especially beneficial today with the spiraling costs of healthcare. The Digital Health Engagement Platform from dacadoo is a mobile app. The platform includes its Health Score and Risk Engine for Life and Health Carriers globally. Click here to download the free White Paper.
Life Carriers, Distributors And Vendors Collaborating On Key Technology Initiatives
The life insurance industry is coming together to work on some key initiatives in 2021. The governance of these projects are spearheaded by industry associations like the Life Distribution Technology Committee (LDTC) and ACORD. This is not new as many of our associations have developed projects in the past such as LIDMA’s Process Improvement Team enhancing ePolicy Delivery, Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) developing Straight Through Processing Standards for Annuities, and life data initiatives partnering with ACORD and LIMRA. There are many more associations educating, standardizing, and identifying best of breed solutions for the life insurance industry including new projects this year. This article will focus on the current initiatives of Life Automated Underwriting, Common API, The New Norm, and the Next Generation Digital Standards.
The Life Distribution Technology Committee, formerly known as the Life Brokerage Technology Committee (LBTC) set up working groups (subcommittees) focused on three projects this year: Common API, Automated Underwriting, and The New Norm. These projects were the result of a survey back in the fourth quarter of 2020 asking the industry to prioritize potential projects solving technology and process pain points. The survey allowed the respondents to rank in order of importance including recommending prospective initiatives not listed. There was then a “Call to Action” for subcommittee co-chairs and volunteers to participate/contribute to each project respectively.
A little history lesson on LDTC: From the mid-1980s through 2008 NAILBA had a Technology Committee. This included a technology magazine and developing their own data standards as well as other technology initiatives. After the Financial Crisis of 2008, funding for the committee was no longer available. In 2009, life carriers, BGAs, and vendors formed a new independent committee with a Charter called “The Life Brokerage Technology Committee” now known as the Life Distribution Technology Committee. The purpose is to have equal representation from carriers, distributors, and vendors to create and maintain an open forum to address technology and process issues that affect the efficiencies and costs of member’s businesses. LDTC is focused on the adoption of best practices by the member organizations for their common good and the benefit of their customers. There are no membership dues; LDTC is strictly a volunteer organization. There are currently over 160+ carrier, distributor, and vendor members. The LDTC LinkedIn group has 300+ industry members. The current LDTC co-chairs are Marjorie Ma of AIG, Pat Wedeking of Tellus Brokerage, and Brian Kirkland of SuranceBay. The steering committee, who are also co-founders, is Ken Leibow of InsurTech Express, Joann Mattson of Highland Capital Brokerage, and Jeff Lingenfelter of John Hancock Insurance Company. Over the years LDTC had worked on many important initiatives to help standardize and improve processes from eApp and ePolicy Delivery to developing a Test Harness to validate a life carrier’s pending case status data feed. LDTC had an annual face-to-face meeting at the NAILBA conference who sponsored a meeting room where the annual technology survey results, deliverables on projects from subcommittees, and the latest on emerging technologies were presented. The meeting was open to LDTC members and non-members. This year in the COVID world we are having the annual meeting Virtually in December.
Common API
What is an API? This stands for Application Programming Interface, which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. A fully API-driven data model is critical for the data dissemination process within the life insurance ecosystem to truly make data distribution and usage simple, secure, and reliable once and for all. Driven from within the independent distribution space, this modernized vision of data exchange could reduce costs and operating burdens for the biggest of industry players, while opening up revenue channels, enabling innovation, and removing market entry obstacles for best-of-breed insurtech and accelerators. The co-chairs of the working group are Meg Rose of Insurance Technologies and Amanda Yoho of Proformex. The working group is identifying key industry issues such as data consistency, distribution involvement, use cases, and vendor commonality. They are also building an industry wide adoption strategy.
Automated Underwriting
This sub-committee focuses on benchmarking and providing guidance on a go forward basis as it relates to automated and accelerated underwriting for fully underwritten products. The co-chairs of the working group are Dana Grove of Cerner and Jeff McCauley of MIB. This is different from “Simplified” or “Instant” issue products we’ve all known about from the past, but rather looking forward on what we are doing and should do as technology and data help us underwrite policies faster. One of the key objectives is to identify pain-points in the accelerated underwriting workflow and recommend solutions. The Automated Underwriting Subcommittee is also creating an “Underwriting Programs Search Tool” for the industry to use and an Admin Tool to maintain the content. The types of underwriting programs included are Accelerated Underwriting, Simplified Issue, Non-Med, and Executive Advantage. The tool has search functionality like “show me Accelerated Underwriting programs that will issue up to age 70” and/or “programs for face amounts up to $3 million.” The tool has information on Average Processing Time, Tele-interview Time, and ways to submit business like eApp and Drop Ticket for example. There are underwriting programs from the top 27 life insurance carriers like Lincoln Financial’s “LincXpress” and John Hancock’s “Express Track.” The LDTC Underwriting Programs App was developed in partnership with InsurTech Express and was scheduled to be made available to BGAs online free by the end of October. Here is the website to try it out: https://www.insurtechexpress.com/underwriting-programs/.
The New Norm
While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt operating models across the insurance industry, there is still a significant gap for the industry overall compared to other finance or consumer industries, even on the property and casualty side. This sub-committee will identify the next impactful areas for the life insurance industry as a whole to embrace cutting-edge technology or processes in order to better serve our customers. The co-chairs are Mike Carter of National Life Group and Lance Taylor of Vanbridge.
Next Generation Digital Standards (NGDS)
ACORD has been working on a new standard for life and annuities called the “Next Generation Digital Standards” (NGDS). Digital standards are designed to enable “small” fine-grained business transactions between insurance systems. They will define the data structures necessary to support granular messages which can be used in microservices or invoked by API methods.
Reasons for Using Digital Standards
The goals and mission of ACORD Digital Standards is to establish a common approach to setting standards, structures, and implementation guidelines while leveraging ACORD Data Standards. Also maximize data interoperability resulting in seamless and controlled data exchanges between applications. ACORD leverages member inputs across geographies and communities to ensure ACORD specifications developed are cross-domain. What ACORD has done over the years and continues to do is to receive subject-matter expertise and members through sharing business scenarios, use cases, and specifications. This also includes providing feedback for improvement and production implementation.
ACORD kicked-off a NGDS Electronic Health Records subgroup that I am participating in. The goal of this group is to identify the relevant Electronic Health Records use cases and data points needed to support APIs and develop standard structures that are reusable and easily implemented. The scope covers more than just electronic health records, we are looking at the entire life underwriting process from prescription checks to electronic lab slips. We want to normalize the transactions in the underwriting process for the purpose of reducing costs and speed-to-market. Leading the subgroup is Nicholas France of ACORD. The team in the subgroup has top life underwriting experts from carriers like AIG, Transamerica and Prudential; distributors like Highland Capital Brokerage and M-Financial; EHR experts from Human API and Clareto; and representation from MIB, Diameter Health, and Verisk. There are many more industry experts participating in this NGDS subgroup.
If we want to continue to improve and solve industry challenges in technology and process for life insurance, then it requires the professionals in our space to actively collaborate and participate in these associations and working groups. For those that have made contributions in the past as well as the present, we thank you for volunteering your valuable time and expertise as well as company resources. We are working together as a community to make the industry better for all the trading partners and ultimately for consumers who buy life insurance.