Ken Leibow

When we talk about sending life applications electronically in-good-order, it’s not just transmitting a data file to the carrier. There needs to be a deeper understanding of the life carrier’s policy administration system and that carrier’s fulfillment process. The eApp data could first be sent to a call center or paramedical provider as interim steps before arriving to the carrier. There are multiple models for the fulfillment process of life apps. In these models, underwriting can be accelerated or automated. Today there are always one or more data calls for automating underwriting like Rx scripts, MIB, identity verification, and now EHR. Below we will take a look at two eApp vendors that have deep relationships with policy admin system and underwriting engines. Also, of the many policy admin systems out there, one is very focused on APIs to easily exchange information with eApp solution providers.

eApp and New Business Underwriting
iGO^®, iPipeline’s market leading eApp, leveraged by the industry to submit in-good-order applications has been the eApp of choice for the life insurance market for over a decade.

With more than 11 million eApp transactions completed over the last three years, iGO is an omni-channel eApp used in captive, brokerage and consumer-focused channels and is used by over 300,000 agents and advisors per year, representing over 55 carriers and 300 distributors. These agents and advisors use iGO to sell products ranging from life, LTCI, disability, and final expense to Medicare supplement and annuities to help secure their customers’ financial futures. When agents and advisors use iGO with iPipeline’s LifePipe Term Quote engine, iSolve® Permanent Quote engine, or Illustrations, they receive access to iPipeline’s full suite of tools for optimizing the sales process. iGO is vital in reducing cycle time and increasing placement ratios through the use of easy and intuitive reflexive-based questions and rules to ensure all needed information is captured up-front—ensuring a 100 percent in-good-order application and enabling straight through processing.

iGO comes with many out-of-the-box integrations to ensure accurate and clean data is captured during the application process. The eApp validates mailing and email addresses, as well as bank account information used for premium payment. It also comes with third-party integrations such as LexisNexis, HIPAASpace, Milliman, and others to help supplement the data captured in iGO, and allow carriers to jump-start the underwriting process.

iGO can be seamlessly integrated with iPipeline’s Resonant® new business and underwriting platform for unlocking point-of-sale decisioning and workbench capabilities that can significantly streamline the new business process. iGO can also be integrated with numerous other new business underwriting systems, as well as reinsurance engines from MunichRe, SwissRe, RGA, and more, for point-of-sale decisioning and automated underwriting. iGO data can also seamlessly flow through to carriers’ policy administration systems such as LifePro, ALIP, Faustin, DXC, or CyberLife—through direct integrations, or through Resonant. iGO’s integrations with these policy administration systems can also provide in-force policy data for supplementing the eApp process. For agencies using iPipeline’s Agency Integrator solutions, iGO cases can be integrated into Agency Integrator to allow for out-of-the-box case approval.

iPipeline’s iGO e-App provides a market-leading, comprehensive solution for digitizing, and simplifying, the life insurance application and underwriting process—and optimizing business operations. To learn more, please visit https://www.ipipeline.com/products/igo/.

Straight Through Processing Through Low Code
Equisoft/apply is an end-to-digital point of sale solution for all buying channels—carriers, BGAs, advisors, D2C—even paper if you want. It’s an easy-to-use eApplication for any device that asks questions defined by the carrier, quickly captures data, creates an instant application and submits for real-time decisions. Equisoft/apply has the latest, most responsive UI-UX and low code-no code applications. These features make it possible to easily configure a unique insurance buying journey. That makes these next-gen solutions ready to power your D2C initiatives and grow digital sales. This flexible eApplication solution means you don’t have to settle for old-fashioned question flows and clunky user interfaces, instead you can create superior sales experiences for your advisors and clients.

There are three policy admin system (PAS) integrations: At the end of the app it submits the signed app which is taken into the carrier’s PAS for new business processing–through underwriting, suitability checks, etc. When completing the app it generates real time quotes by integrating with Oracle’s Insurance Policy Administration system (OIPA) to send data like age, state, and gender so premium can be calculated and the quote returned to /apply.

Equisoft/apply has instant decision integrations. Between Part 1 and Part 2 processing /apply can get an underwriting decision. It integrates with the PAS to get an instant decision and send it in real time to the advisor so that they can proceed with the application if the buyer likes the quote.

Low-Code Configuration of Your Insurance Buying Journey

• Low-code supports greater control than no-code tools while keeping speed to market.
• Quickly and easily design the digital application form to match your insurance products and facilitate straight-through-processing.

Optimize your buying journeys: Equisoft/apply gives you the flexibility to easily optimize your application processes across all channels. These eApps are low code optimized for insurance buying journeys, giving you ultimate control over building engaging sales flows. This means you can easily create apps that are unique to your company and products. This results in better customer experience, fewer dropouts and faster policy decisions.

There is customization to a carrier’s particular product and buying journey. The objective is to create one common experience for buying, replacements, upsell, and inforce policy changes. It makes instant decisions and issue in seconds on any device, which facilitates straight-through processing, in-good-order validation for instant issue, and eSignature reduces drop-offs. Straight through processing is the new standard for eApplications so that they should integrate seamlessly with your existing internal and external systems, enabling you to get the validations needed to reduce the number of not-in-good-order (NIGO) apps and make policy decisions in real time. Analytics track completion rates, and diagnose and address issues in the buying process. Progress tracking, clear UI for the user and analytics for the IT teams is made available.

Another feature is to support direct-to-consumer (D2C). Being able to easily and quickly create eApps tailored to your buying journeys means that you can create one common customer and advisor experience for buying, replacements, upsell, and policy changes. These eApps can become the front-end of your D2C offerings, providing modern UI/UX that is consistent across the board. And the built-in configuration tools are all you will need to maintain your applications without having to write any code.

APIs Are Fundamental to Creating Insurance Ecosystems
From a broker’s perspective, there are several things to know about application programming interfaces (APIs). First is that they are engineered to facilitate integrations between systems and data sources, and this includes everything from the big backend insurance core systems down to data from IoT devices, mobile, usage-based insurance apps, fitness trackers, and the like.

Even more important though is how brokers benefit from API-first enterprise insurance systems. Those systems are much more likely to offer pre-fill, accessing high-quality data to speed the completion of digitalized applications and decrease or eliminate errors and fraud. APIs also enable digital communications options that didn’t exist even a few years ago. As a result, API-first systems can be used to create dramatically better workflows, leading to faster underwriting cycles, shorter sales cycles, and much less paper.

This may be the most important bit: APIs can help dramatically reduce the administrative load for agents and brokers, giving them more time to do the important work of managing relationships with both insurers and the insureds. APIs are what enable agents and brokers to access and update customer and prospect information–ideally in real time–and offer similar self-service options to insureds.

At a higher level, APIs are foundational to creating insurance ecosystems. The most ready examples of ecosystems are Amazon and eBay. Shoppers go there for an opportunity to consider many products, review their attributes, as well as add-ons from partners and service providers. Ecosystems recognize customers, collect their histories and make informed suggestions appropriate to their interests, demographics, and more. Purchases are accelerated by virtue of being timely, personalized, and digital. Here is great three-minute video overview of insurance ecosystems.

“Ecosystems help brokers by offering a seamless customer experience and fostering relationships in a moment of need. Ecosystems also help brokers expand capacity for revenue-generating activities because they spend less time on administrative tasks,” says Karen Valdez, head of life and annuity product marketing at EIS. “Insureds benefit from better customer experiences and personalized offerings, which leads to increased customer retention, referrals, and satisfaction. APIs help ambitious insurers bring it all together and offer real customer centricity without complexity.”

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The digital life insurance sales experience is continuously improving in both agent facing or consumer facing software applications. So what are some of the technologies responsible for these enhancements and why should you know? Look, I don’t want to scare you from reading the rest of this article with technical terms like Electronic Health Records, No-Code software solutions, and APIs. When addressing the digital point of sales solutions to carriers, distributors, or advisors, you need to understand the business problem these technologies solve without having to dive deep into the technology. With this basic understanding, you are better informed and feel more confident in investing in the software solutions that will help sell more life insurance.

Transforming Consumer Experience with the Power of Digital Health Data
So, what could the new customer experience look like for buying life insurance? First, a potential customer meets with an agent to discuss their situation and financial needs in the event of their untimely death, recommending the best life insurance product for their situation and providing a quote. The individual then makes a decision to move forward and, with their agent, they get started on the application and add their health info to the part two. The agent sends the application to the carrier and it goes to the underwriting department. Then, the customer is almost done. An electronic medical record is searched for and comes back within a day. The underwriting team makes a decision and the policy is sent to the customer to officially purchase, just a few days after submitting their application. And, now, one more family has peace of mind that they’re financially covered.

Human API is dedicated to being a key player in this customer experience. I have written several articles about Electronic Health Data (EHR) and Human API has always been a critical player in the discussion, but there’s much more. Human API is not only consumer-forward, not just an EHR provider, not just helpful in replacing APSs, not just sharing better underwriting data, not just tech-agile and API-driven—Human API is a critical partner for carriers seeking to showcase the best in consumer experience and to accomplish their most strategic transformation goals.

• Defining the future of consumer experiences and interactions—across all touch points.
• Expanding and accelerating transformation to better support distribution partners and reinsurers.
• Seamlessly turning data into intelligence by possessing a flexible and scalable data infrastructure for modern, fast and efficient processes.

Here is a quote from a top carrier about leading the changes and best of breed experience, “Human API’s platform further expands our ability to provide our members the best experience buying life insurance. We were the first company to use digital health data and are continually looking for ways to improve our processes—including increasing the percentage of medical records we can receive digitally which cuts down on the time that it takes to get life insurance coverage.”—Christopher Flint, senior vice president and GM, Life Insurance, at USAA. For more information about Human API, visit www.humanapi.co.

How No-Code eApp and EHR Saves Time
Technology that allows for rapid decision-making, the functionality of a no-code platform, and a customer-service driven approach to integration is what Management Research Services (MRS) has created as an industry innovator. Many underwriting decisions are easy ones. The issue is that it requires analysis of massive data sets to arrive at the decision. Technology improvements offered in the MRS no-code platform will never eliminate the need for underwriters; they just eliminate the need for underwriters to spend hours upon hours of reading and scanning the intel provided for each client.

Consider the recent history and changes in record-keeping across the medical industry. Generations of paper records yielded to the first-generation Electronic Medical Record (EMR). EMRs are not standardized across providers, they are really an in-house chart—something of a relic from the days before cloud computing. The lack of standardization means there is a lot to manually unpack and interpret.

The process today has now been turned upside down: Most underwriting decisions are already made. The applications become about seeing how and where each applicant qualifies, according to each client’s pre-programmed rules and decisions. The result is rapid underwriting decisions made at the point of sale; over 95 percent of applicants are processed within just minutes.

The example of the rise of EMRs provides a behind-the-scenes way technology began saving time in application processing. It is notable that where MRS is truly going to save time for insurance carriers or third-party vendors is with the sleek functionality of the no-code platform. Their system bypasses an expensive and time-consuming step in the process by removing the need to work with developers or IT. They have already taken care of that step for you; no programming or coding experience is required in the process. This results in their clients becoming empowered.

MRS has a customer service driven approach which means rapid integration times for systems customized from the ground-up and with minimal maintenance costs. They want to collaborate with you to build the platform or E-App that best serves your organizational and client needs. Click here to learn more or request a demo.

APIs Bridge Together Systems for a Better Life Insurance Sales Experience
As I continue educating the industry on APIs, I reached out to Paperless Solutions Group. Bill Walasek, VP of Sales at Paperless Solutions Group recently spoke with an industry veteran who asked about APIs. Bill asked him to talk about how he did business a few years ago. He recounted the days when, meeting with a prospect, he would scribble down some notes during the meeting and bring those notes back to the office. He would hand those notes over to his staff with some direction on how to proceed in regards to coverage. At that point, like any good businessman, he would move on to the next prospect. He was really not involved with the case unless something unusual came up like a rating or decline. Bottom line, a month or two out, he looked at his commission statement to see if the case was placed. Sound a bit familiar?

After this handoff, a lot goes on behind the scenes. This includes storing the data he collected (likely in a file cabinet or maybe a spreadsheet), getting a quote, filling out an application, submitting it to a carrier, waiting for a response, and if placed, finally receiving a policy and the commission. Take a second, think about how much data has moved through this process and how many different and disparate systems that the data must be ingested into.

The likelihood of information being lost or improperly entered is great and the time to move this data around is even greater. What was and is needed is a way to bridge all this information to systems that can accept it without keystrokes, resources, and wasted time. This is why APIs are so critical for our industry.

We, as an industry, have just begun to see the power of the use of APIs. Other industries have been doing this for years. APIs pull the appropriate data needed, at the time that it is needed, and then move it to the correct place in the next step of the process. So we are now getting to a place where you can take prospect information and feed it into a CRM where it can then be sent to a quoting system. Once the appropriate quote has been agreed upon, that information can then be delivered into an e-application which is sent to the carrier and stored in the CRM. The carrier can then ingest that information into their systems and send the agent status updates that can be stored and displayed wherever they wish. If there are outstanding requirements, those pieces of information or forms can be collected quickly so the case does not go stale. Finally, once the case is placed, policies can be delivered electronically and, yes, the commission almost instantaneously. Aren’t APIs great?

“At Paperless Solutions Group (PSG), we embrace APIs. In fact, we utilized APIs before APIs were cool. All our solutions are API driven from eApplication, to quoting with underwriting (eValuate), to requirements gathering (eRequirement), to eSignature. While these solutions provide a seamless experience, we understand that there are other solutions that you have invested much time, resources, and dollars implementing. What APIs provide is the ability to play nice in the sandbox with other solution providers. And this brings up what should be considered when implementing any solutions: How does it affect what I do today and how will it work with our vision moving forward?” To learn more about PSG solutions visit www.paperlesssolutions.net.

There are many benefits to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in underwriting life insurance. This is a growing trend weaving AI into the fabric of underwriting decision engines and workbench technology. So it’s time to take the next step to remove tech people from the process and make it possible for the underwriting experts and business side to take control using no-code solutions. AI is also expanding in sales and digital marketing in general. However, because insurance is sold and not bought, the focus is to provide advisors with easy access to sales and lead tracking tools using a dashboard user experience. Also, there should be focus on specific sales tools that “visually” help the advisor explain the benefits of the product. This will ultimately close more business.

Personalization: Insurtech’s Secret Sauce for Life Underwriting
The insurance industry is stuck in a sort of technological amber. Many companies have taken their offerings online while others use software solutions such as Slack, MS Teams, Google Suite, or others to encourage collegiality and efficiencies, but underwriters are still relegated to their desks for hours reading applications and supporting documentation to approve or deny coverage based on the data provided. It’s slow and boring, but it has to be done to keep the company afloat.

Eugene Shafronsky is the head of strategy at thinktum™, an Insurtech enabler. His background in underwriting and deep understanding of the state of the industry means he knows the technology at play and how it can all work together to everyone’s advantage. “Underwriters are vital to the insurance business. We believe though that, in the future, most underwriting will be done using technology.” He adds, “This doesn’t remove underwriters from the process, but human brains—while complex, and highly capable—need rest from repetitive or routine processes. A solution such as thinktum’s liz life suite can free up underwriters to do more challenging and rewarding tasks such as designing new insurance products or contributing to the company’s bottom line in more creative ways.”

Personalization is why Shafronsky is so bullish on their technology suite. “We see many companies trying to make the application process faster, but faster is not enough. And focusing on outdated static models of yes/no answers is also not enough, because then you lose the most important aspect—accuracy. By using our approach, personalization can be applied to every application and the approach is intuitive, you can achieve much greater accuracy and better detail on risk assessment. And, if you think about it, creating a personalized approach can also actually make it faster as a byproduct.

“We see, most commonly, a lack of flexibility by companies to make the change technologically. And pure no-code is the solution. Our no-code suite uses a graphic canvas that allows non-developers to move boxes, drag and drop, and connect them in different ways, then set up specific rules that are predefined to create any flow they want. This significantly shortens implementation and optimization times. Think of it as the WordPress of AI. It’s all about the interface in front and robust technology in behind.” Learn more about thinktum’s pure no-code liz life suite at https://www.thinktum.ai.

Simplify the Life Sales Experience for Advisors
In a world where artificial intelligence and machine learning seem to dominate media headlines, it has become a common misconception that technology is out to replace human interaction. But Finaeo believes the opposite to be true: “Applying for life insurance is an inherently complex process, and we believe that the value of advisor relationships—with their knowledge, trust, empathy, and support—cannot be replaced by machines. Our goal is simple: We want to see a world where insurance is accessible to everyone, and we believe that can be achieved by putting the right technology in the hands of advisors who care.”

Finaeo is an all-in-one, turn-key, life insurance sales software on a mission to bridge the digital divide between carriers, agencies, advisors and clients. Founded in 2016 in Toronto, Finaeo began their journey by partnering with life insurance agencies across Canada to empower their advisors with a more efficient means of doing business. By early 2020, Finaeo had helped advisors to place over $1billion in coverage for Canadian families. And in 2021, with demand increasing, they launched into the USA—operating as a tech partner with IMOs and BGAs across all 50 states.

The core of Finaeo’s solution is simple: Automate remedial tasks in the sales process and instantly provide product recommendations, giving advisors more time to build client relationships and provide expert advice. They offer an end-to-end system where advisors can build websites, digitally onboard clients, need-assess, maintain records, as well as search, quote, compare and apply from their extensive marketplace of over 30 carriers and 500 products.

As clients demand more asynchronous interaction with their insurance providers, Finaeo is uniquely positioned to partner with BGAs to enhance their digital identities and expand reach. To learn more about Finaeo for your BGA visit http://www.finaeo.com or contact Kyle Langstaff, director of business development at kyle.langstaff@finaeo.com.

Sell more Disability Insurance with a Presentation Sales Tool
Many BGAs, GAs, IMOs, etc. across the country have a similar question on their mind, “How do we get more advisors selling more DI plans?” This is a question that’s been on the top of many BGA’s minds for the past two decades. Another way to phrase this question might be, “How do we provide advisors with client specific DI presentation tools to help them better position, sell, and close far more of the DI illustrations we provide them?” When you look at the core elements to having a highly effective income protection (DI) conversation with clients, advisors must be able to quickly position the need, demonstrate the client’s problem, present new plan solutions in an easy-to-understand way, and put premium into perspective.

The vast majority of advisors are trying to accomplish a version of this by using DI illustrations, statistics sheets, and general non-client-specific marketing materials. These items clearly have their role but, when it really comes down to it, advisors typically experience a wave of objections from clients using these types of tools and presentation approach, which makes most advisors simply struggle with or avoid this critical topic of risk mitigation with their clients.

OneProtection’s DI presentation software is a tool that helps advisors take this friction off the table by allowing them to present the income protection story to their clients in a simple yet visually powerful way. This drastically improves the advisors ability to mitigate or even eliminate the most common client objections while simultaneously increasing their closing percentages and case sizes. This is music to a BGA’s ears because the more advisors they have selling more DI plans through them the better. Everyone wins.

Even though OneProtection’s DI Software is not specifically designed for the BGA per se, it is designed for the advisors and insurance professionals who are doing their business with them. Through OneProtection’s BGA Affiliation program, they are able to strategically partner with BGAs across the country with joint marketing efforts to help advisors across the country drastically grow their DI sales production. To learn more about OneProtection visit https://www.oneprotection.tech.

We see what I like to call “digital insurance companies” and think instant issue and direct-to-consumer for low priced limited benefit products. There is so much more that many people in the industry don’t know about these companies including myself, until back in April I had the honor to moderate a panel at the LIMRA Life Insurance Conference in Tampa. On the panel were leaders from Bestow, Ethos, and Ladder Life. Also this year I was contacted by an old friend and colleague from when I worked at Genworth who introduced me to Asteya, which is an insurance company with a digital platform for products like disability insurance. What I have learned from all these companies is that they each have their own unique digital model for selling insurance, powerful insurance products, advanced AI technology for underwriting, and are in other distribution channels like independent brokerage. I see this as a trend that is growing, and there are several other companies out there competing. Today we are going to focus on three unique digital sales platforms.

My company, InsurTech Express, is currently marketing Asteya’s digital platform. I asked Chad Ourso who leads distribution sales and Noelle Bartlett, life distribution marketing, to explain the Asteya offering and digital platform. Let’s dive in.

If you had to guess what was more likely to happen, getting injured due to accident or illness and not being able to work versus passing away, you would likely say the former. But, did you know that you’re 3.5 times more likely to need disability insurance than you are life? Yet only 29 percent of people have disability coverage compared to 44 percent that have individual life insurance policies. Some believe that this gap in the market is due to three different issues: Poor positioning, lack of education, and accessibility.

Compared to life, car, and health insurance, the term “disability insurance” is out of place because it doesn’t make known what it’s protecting—your income! We don’t call life insurance “death insurance,” right? Asteya believes that the term “income insurance” better represents what is being insured and why it’s necessary to have.

Looking at the overall market, there’s an accessibility issue. Historically, income insurance was marketed and sold exclusively to white collar professionals with high incomes. The purchasing process was laborious and included medical exams, bloodwork, and had an application process that could take up to 90 days. Luckily, thanks to technology and new types of products, income insurance is now more accessible than ever.

With new instant issue products that are tech-first and use AI-powered underwriting engines, the speed in which a policy can be sold (agent assisted quote to issue in 15 minutes) is matched with the ease of case management and administration handled through an online dashboard. These are likely some of the reasons why five-year benefit periods are a big growth segment, making up 17 percent of U.S. sales, when historically it was much lower according to Milliman’s 2021 annual survey. Paired with the workforce now demanding access to non-employer sponsored benefits, freelancers, independent contractors, and blue-collared professionals are receptive and excited to be educated on and get access to income insurance.

So, whether you’re interested in including income insurance (DI) into the suite of products you sell or want to see how one insurtech company is using technology to standout and move forward, check out asteya.world to learn more and contact Chad Ourso at chad.ourso@asteya.world.

Ethos’ Digital Ecosystem
After reaching out to Marty Schaefer, chief distribution officer of Ethos, he offered to tell his story and discuss the innovative technology of Ethos: “In 1998, I started in this industry as a retail agent, meeting families at kitchen tables late at night. I helped deliver the true, democratized value of the product we sell, providing a critical safety net for grieving families. But the industry faced several intractable challenges. The agent base was beginning to age and shrink rapidly. Remaining agents faced time and resource constraints selling a high-touch product that took weeks or months of underwriting. These constraints meant I could only reach a handful of families in a typical week.

“Last year I joined Ethos because I saw a compelling solution to these long-standing issues. I saw a 100 percent digital ecosystem that eliminates all of the most challenging things about buying insurance—for both consumers and agents. It makes medical exams a thing of the past, offering affordable coverage for almost everyone in just minutes. Ethos’ underwriting engine analyzes 300,000+ data points from authorized sources in real time. It works together with our online application, featuring 1,300 reflexive health and lifestyle questions, to determine the best product fit for clients. Using this system, we can instantly approve about 95 percent of applicants ages 18-85. We do it by working with top carriers to offer the broadest range of digital term and whole life products in the industry, some created for our proprietary process.

“In a world where it’s impossible for a financial advisor or insurance agent to meet every consumer’s needs, this fully automated solution now gives agents a way to provide the best underwriting review of every applicant with little to no overhead. This expands our ability to offer life insurance to more consumers, growing margins, efficiency and scale. Agents and agencies are starting to envision the multiplier effect that can have for their business. They see that concurrently to their brokerage appointments, their team can now present life insurance to 100 more people and protect 50 families per week versus just a handful in person. They can now meet that democratized need within time and revenue constraints. Our robust agent portal and custom URL make it simple for them to manage and grow their business.

It’s the most powerful, all-encompassing instant issue buy box in the U.S.—and a tipping point that’s just beginning. We see the greatest opportunity ahead in working with our brokerage partners to reach today’s 80 million uninsured and under-insured Americans.” To discuss the Ethos opportunity for your BGA, please contact Marty Schafer, marty.schafer@getethos.com, or Jason Speigel, head of life distribution, at jason.speigel@getethos.com.”

Bestow’s End-To-End Digital Term Life Insurance Experience
Many of you may know Steve Robinson, chief distribution officer at Bestow. Steve is an industry veteran. I see Steve often at industry events. Steve and his team took time out from their busy schedules to share what differentiates Bestow and an inside look at their end-to-end digital life insurance experience.

Selling life insurance has been historically tedious, with processes that waste precious time for agents all while they risk losing sales when customers tire of the back and forth. Even the most seemingly straightforward transaction, like purchasing a basic term life insurance policy, can take weeks or months. This tech laggard experience is not ideal when people have the power to purchase almost anything online and see it arrive on their doorstep the next day. It shouldn’t take weeks to buy anything, including your term life insurance policy.

Since time is money, this inevitably shifted advisors’ focus to more affluent and, therefore, more profitable customers, leaving middle- and lower-income Americans uninformed about their coverage needs and critically underinsured. The industry must adopt technology solutions that meet the needs and expectations of today’s customers to break this trend. And life insurance carriers must equip agents with the tools to succeed in today’s more competitive sales environment.

Enter Bestow, the leading life insurance technology company built to make life insurance more accessible to millions of people who need it. Bestow is building technology to digitize the industry at large and has created an end-to-end digital term life insurance experience that empowers agents to make faster sales by solving complex industry pain points. This enables agents to expand the life insurance market they serve and provide a better experience to their clients. Customers who purchase a term life insurance policy on Bestow’s platform can apply and, if approved, bind their coverage in as little as five minutes.

Key technologies that Bestow provides:

• The Online Application: a customer-driven, fully digital application with instant-decision underwriting and end to end journey from approval to payment.
• Agent Link: a unique co-branded website solution that gives agents an easy way to share the application with clients and prospects.
• Agent Application: an application platform built for call center sales done completely over the phone in minutes, that provides agents more control over the customer experience and application journey.
• Protect: enables partners to embed a fully-hosted, 100 percent digital term life insurance buying experience either through API integration with a customizable, white-labeled offering or through a simpler plug-and-play solution.

Today, Bestow goes to market in the brokerage channel as an agency and third party administrator (TPA) selling policies issued by North American Company for Life and Health Insurance.^®* Customers can apply for and, if approved, purchase up to $1.5 million in coverage in as little as five minutes within the partner’s application or website. A medical exam is never required. In addition, the company has successfully become a nationally licensed life insurance company. With licenses in 48 states and the District of Columbia, Bestow Life Insurance Company (BLIC) will be able to design and launch its own innovative financial protection products in the near future.

Bestow is committed to giving agents the tools they need to make a sale in minutes, not months. Digitization enables advisors to reach more customers by leveraging technology that eliminates paperwork and case management. Providing a convenient, frictionless process to clients can be even more impactful to the advisor than competitive compensation. When agents have this capability at their fingertips, it enables them to help more clients while expanding their business to new markets and additional revenue streams. To learn more contact Steve Robinson at stephen@bestow.com.

Reference
*Life insurance quotes provided by Bestow Agency, LLC dba Bestow Insurance Services in CA, who is the licensed agent. Term Life Insurance Policies offered by Bestow are issued on policy form LS181 and LS182, or state version including all applicable endorsements and riders, by North American Company for Life and Health Insurance,® Administrative Office, One Sammons Plaza, Sioux Falls, SD 57193. Products or issues ages may not be available in all jurisdictions. Limitations or restrictions may apply. Not available in New York. Our application asks about your lifestyle and health to determine eligibility in order to avoid requiring a medical exam.

In my last Tech-Tock article, I wrote about learning about the latest innovation in insurtech by attending onsite industry conferences. I am very excited to continue to inform you of the latest technology that can help your business grow and stay on the cutting edge. Sorry for the cliché. I continue to discover more new tech innovations and solution providers. This article is focused on two topics. The first is automation in insurance marketing. Whether you are a BGA using the platform or offering it as an agent recruiting tool, you will learn about the power of automated marketing for direct to consumer insurance sales. As I try not to be too technical when writing this column, you have seen since last year that I occasionally write about APIs to educate you on the next generation of sharing information and creating a seamless user experience. I have discovered another powerful API solution that is simply magical for carriers who are developing illustrations for new insurance products.

Conquer Your Marketing With One Solution
For insurance marketers jockeying for position in an ultra-competitive market space, the name of the game is leveraging formative tech tools to enhance customer outreach, increase conversion and retention rates, and boost ROI. Fortunately, as communication methods evolve, Phonexa’s all-in-one marketing automation solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more has shaped how insurance direct marketers and carriers connect with consumers and make more financially sound marketing decisions. Automating marketing initiatives allow insurance agencies to rely more on organic marketing and new technology to complement their back-end leadgen processes. Recent case studies have found that Phonexa helps insurance providers, agents, and agencies reach their full business potential through an all-encompassing automation platform.

Key highlights include:

• Significant reduction in marketing spend
• Less manual work stemming from more automated tasks
• More time to convert leads to sales
• Increased revenue due to heightened conversion rates
• Lowered fraud resulting from an advanced vetting process

There are multiple solutions that are critical to the success of automating marketing. Starting with data analytics, which needs to have fast-loading real-time data insights that uncover key information about your insurance lead generation and ROI. You then need an application to handle your calls. Insurance lead applications for inbound calls help you create better customer interaction. Reporting is key to measuring results, especially comparison reports. These reports help identify the most relevant data specific and KPIs specific to your campaigns. You need an application that can filter by geographic area, such as by state, to measure campaign performance and outcomes by a specific region. In order to get adoption, speed-to-contact technology is essential. These LeadGen and communication tools are needed to initiate an efficient customer outreach. Now personalized outreach utilizes outbound calls, emails, and SMS tools for personalized drip campaigns and contact with insurance client segments. Traffic flow optimization allows you to segment your incoming insurance leads to vet out low-intent clients and re-engage lapsed prospects. Phonexa, https://phonexa.com, offers all of these tools as an All-One-Element that integrates all of your lead generation and management in one place in a comprehensive tech stack that covers all areas and demands of the business.

Do Not Be Afraid of APIs
In New York at the Insurtech Insights Conference back in May, I met with the team from Coherent Global, https://coherent.global/. I was amazed at their technology. Even though I am not an actuary, I know tech—this is a game-changer. Nick Leimer, senior technical director at Coherent Global, helped explain in layman’s terms how it all works for their application Coherent Spark.

APIs, (application programming interface) are just a way to connect to different parts of a business process, set of calculations, or both together, while adding speed and flexibility. Think Legos for business processes. Build whatever you want or need from all the parts you have in a box or change out one set of blocks for another. If the process changes, just reconnect the blocks and/or add new ones. Complete flexibility.

What if you had a Lego that would calculate the price for an insurance coverage. Then that Lego could be used by the pricing department to generate the same results with the same inputs and outputs to calculate over and over again and only need to make changes in one location to adjust the calculations in that department. Now think bigger. That block can now be used by the illustration application, and it will always match the results expected from the pricing team. Even bigger still, the same block could feed the valuation system, the project system, and even then the cash flow testing system. The same results from the same block across all business units in different systems. One source of truth managed from one location.

The use of APIs to address this issue is applicable to a wide range of business and process calculations. The same base calculation is used in many different systems with the expectation that the results are consistent in all systems. Anyone who has been part of a large transformation or upgrade project has found a calculation or process that should be the same for all parts of the company. But because a system is only rarely used, or will not be used until a later date in the transformation workflow, it is pushed to the bottom of the backlog where it is likely deemed out of scope or forgotten. Now instead of a single source truth for this calculation from an API, the calculations in different systems will be updated at different times by different resources which typically cause the calculations to deliver inconsistent results requiring re-work and timeline extensions.

The solution Coherent Spark has several use cases for life, health and annuity products. It can be used for ”back office” actuarial calculations in which a client uses Spark for common regulatory market value and reserving calculations. It can also be used for new product development and illustrations such as to a complete illustration for a new IUL product and recover botched delivery for new distribution partners. For supplemental health benefits, Spark can be used to create an API from plan design and rate excel model. The last use case is that Spark can be used for life policy administration conversion which significantly reduces costs and risks.

Here are two quotes about the APIs that sum it all up: “They no longer have to build a core application that tries to do everything. Instead, they can contract out certain responsibilities by using already created pieces that do the job better. So APIs are the Lego bricks of software development: Standardized tools for software to communicate with other software, leading to faster building and deployment and faster load times,” says Corey Walther, Allianz Life. And: “Coherent Spark enables an API-based cloud ecosystem making it easier for internal and external processes to talk to one another so data can be quickly handed off from one process to the next, making automation easier and the development and deployment of new workflows quicker,” says Todd Buchanan, US CEO of Coherent.

Industry conferences are back! I just returned from a two week business trip. First I flew to Tampa to attend the LIMRA Life Insurance Conference at the end of April. I was then invited by the National Brokerage Agencies (NBA) to speak at their Spring Conference in Dallas. From there, I flew to Denver to attend the Association of Home Office Underwriters (AHOU) Annual Conference. Each one of these conferences had great attendance, top speakers, educational sessions, and exhibitors with new innovative products and services. I learned a lot, and it was a fantastic networking opportunity. There are so many conferences happening throughout this year 2022 hosted by industry associations, IMOs, and technology groups; it’s almost impossible to attend them all. This is a nice problem to have as to which ones to pick to attend, sponsor, and/or where to exhibit. Many companies have the resources to split their teams to cover multiple conferences, especially those that may be happening around the same time. The best part is the positive energy you feel when people appreciate the in-person interaction that was lacking during the hiatus period in the last two years because of COVID. I did attend a couple of conferences late last year but they had lighter attendance, and some were hybrids with remote participation. Just not the same.

Challenges fuel opportunities for Life Insurtech
Exhibiting at both the LIMRA Life Insurance Conference and at the AHOU Conference, I met with the Sapiens team. Sapiens is an industry leader in carrier new business and underwriting systems for both life and property and casualty business. I spoke with Jennifer Smith, vice president of Life and Annuity Products in North America, about the opportunities they are seeing in the market today: “Between the complexities of life products, shifting business models, and ever-changing consumer expectations, the demand for impactful and innovative solutions to support the distribution market continues to grow. New opportunities to increase customer retention and build your multigenerational book of business have become game changing imperatives in this new dimension of insurance. And, of course, technology continues to play a pivotal role in helping to strategically transform the channels in which we communicate, operate and market. The market is flooded with insights on how the challenges of the past two years have caused companies to squeeze in several years’ worth of innovation and ideas into narrow frames. Yet the continual challenge of creating an all-encompassing platform, which can seamlessly support the entire cast of the insurance ecosystem—carriers, brokers, technology partners, and the customer—remains a challenge.”

For many organizations, the benefits of selling directly to consumers—higher margins, faster turnarounds, access to customer data—should be an ace in the hole. The ability to offer your clients an omnichannel “online experience with the similar capabilities and experience of being face to face,” is crucial these days. “During our recent Sapiens Customer Council,” Smith continued, “where a few dozen of our North American customers gathered, one of our life carriers noted that they have an 80 percent close rate when a consumer comes to their website directly and an agent was recommended to them. It was also noted that one of the reasons this carrier is better able to meet customers needs, is that they partnered with a progressive solution provider, Sapiens, who helped them reshape and redefine the ‘sold, not bought,’ and integrate the right tools and technology to support both customer demand and business needs.

“One of the beneficial components, in this new frontier, has become the Sapiens Illustration solution, which is enabling the agent to easily run simple and complex ‘what if’ scenarios to show and explain to the consumer how the insurance product will behave, how value accumulates, and what their premiums are doing to protect them. Instead of competing with the ‘Amazon Effect,’ our customer determined that if they could deliver real-time data insights for the broker and client, reduce time in to fill-out the application, underwriting, and errors, that they could focus more on what matters most—ensuring that customers are given exemplary agent or advisory experiences. Evidence is pointing to the fact that today’s up and coming agents have very different expectations of their experience and engagement with the tools required to explain and illustrate life insurance as the initiation of a good customer experience with an insurance carrier. They want intuitive capabilities that walk a customer through the life of an insurance policy and then they want that detail entered to continue through the process of applying for the illustrated product and hopefully enable point of sale decisioning or indication of the rating.

“We continue to work with consumers, carriers and partners across the life industry, demonstrating digital and differentiating ideas to better help close the life insurance protection gap. Leveraging decades of experience along with innovative ways to drive adoption of life products—either through new direct to consumer channels, or through current (or new) agent networks—we are fueling new methods and opportunities to educate markets on the importance of protecting their families and future.

“While so many things continue to shift and change, those of us who have been in the industry know that there has been one constant on the life side, and that is insurance is a product that’s pretty fraught with emotions. Going forward, the ability to empower agents to continue to educate, empathize and market products that have purpose, value, and deliver a sense of protection and security, will continue to create opportunities for those who are first to adapt to the new reality. Our Sapiens solutions for New Business and Underwriting are already helping life and annuity carriers navigate and evolve in this new era, and yesterday’s challenges only fuel our ability to deliver on the opportunities for tomorrow and beyond.”

Turning on the Power of EHR Data
AHOU is definitely a mass gathering of life insurance underwriters, data scientists, and anyone related to the underwriting process. Exhibiting at the conference was Diameter Health; specifically I met with Dr. Paulo Pinho, vice president and medical director. He explained that medical underwriting has traditionally been a manual process requiring skilled resources to sift through attending physician statements (APSs). Comprised of hundreds of pages delivered as PDF files, today’s APSs—while based on data that is captured in electronic health records (EHRs)—are essentially paper analogs that require underwriters and medical directors to use the same time and resource-intensive processes to find data critical to risk assessment. Some carriers, re-insurers and insurtech vendors have recognized that the ubiquity of EHRs and subsequent availability of clinical data in near real-time could be disruptive for underwriting—delivering data elements that are most relevant to risk assessment directly into underwriting workflows. Theoretically, this should enhance automation, improve speed to issue and improve client experience. However, their exploration of EHR data has uncovered the fact that raw clinical data poses challenges due to poor data quality, inconsistency, and lack of interoperability, particularly in the most complex patients who may see multiple providers in multiple care settings.

“Diameter Health’s Fusion technology is purpose-built for turning raw clinical data into a high value data asset. It ingests multi-source, multi-format data and generates a semantically normalized longitudinal record that makes key data points accessible to underwriters. Diameter Health’s comprehensive and scalable technology has tackled the high volume, multi-source aggregation required by the nation’s Health Information Exchanges, health insurance payers, state and federal governments, and more recently a portfolio of life insurance ecosystem players. Our life insurance clients realize that claims data has its gaps, medications don’t tell the full story, and individual labs represent one point in time and not the line that connects discrete points. They realize that clean clinical data is the thread that mitigates gaps, weaves the full story, and forms the line that transforms the episodic into the continuous—these transformations are critical to an evidence based, client centric and seamless underwriting experience.

“Beyond an APS replacement solution, clean EHR data is the foundation for accelerated underwriting, claims and disability cover. Timely, rich population data can drive pricing, client engagement, fraud detection, new product design and even dynamic underwriting premised on a wellness model. Diameter Health is the enterprise data quality solution necessary to disrupt life insurance through automation and simplification.”

Life insurance technology innovations from back office policy admin systems to distribution digital point of sales solutions and enhancement in automating underwriting are advancing significantly. The best way to get your arms around all the great changes happening in the industry is to get out on the road and visit customers, carriers, vendors and industry events.

Digital sales platforms and operational outsourcing has been trending in the life insurance space for the last two years. I have touched on these topics in previous articles, however today I want to dive deeper. I also have been slowly introducing in the Broker World Tech-Tock column technology related to selling Medicare products because these have become the hot cross-sell products for life agents.

BGAs Reducing Operation Costs While Focusing on Sales and Marketing
Firms seeking scalability and growth are turning to an operations model that right-sources business processes to offshore firms with industry-wide experience and expertise. This shift catapults the trajectory of company growth by optimizing efficiencies and freeing essential staff to focus on sales and customer experience while reallocating expenses towards sales and recruiting efforts. Right-sourcing reduces operational costs and creates stability and continuity during seasonal ebbs and flows of business, providing a solid foundation for growth.

Employee Pooling (EP), a third-party financial services processing firm headquartered in Nashville with services delivered out of New Delhi, has numerous success stories with large and small firms that often start in the baby pool. It begins by establishing a trusted working relationship and steadily adding more services over time. The scenarios for seeking external support vary greatly: A firm has suddenly lost a key staff member, a BGA wants to focus on sales and doesn’t have the time or resources to manage essential administrative positions, there is too much unpredictability in hiring, training, and retaining skilled personnel within budget and scaling to meet service standards depending on work volume, or simply desiring to keep salaries and expenses to a minimum. No matter the “why” the results are impressive.

A BGA with three agency principals out of Seattle decided to completely reimagine the way they do business: They changed from a brokerage agency to a marketing organization focusing on sales and increasing profits while adding more resources to their general agency—they committed to eliminating everything that got in the way of sales and customer experience. Over a two-year period, starting with six full-time employees to manage agent appointments, new business application processing, case management, commissions, and policy management, this firm transitioned five of their employees out of the company, reducing annual payroll by $312,000 ($62,400 per employee). They moved all administrative tasks to EP, who appointed an equal number of experienced department specialists and their team leaders to deliver and manage the agency’s business. The payoff was dramatic. The firm added $265,200 to their bottom line. EP allows a variable pricing model and only charges for services delivered. With a huge, low-cost, young, educated labor market in New Delhi, EP can afford to add scale and stability and back up staff to meet strict service standards in an industry with wide swings in the flow of business. The total annual cost for this BGA’s services totaled $46,800—25 percent less than the cost of one in-house employee.

An eBGA is Changing the Game for Life Insurance (Sales + Technology)
My definition of an eBGA is a life distributor that uses technology for recruiting agents. This technology attracts agents because it is designed specifically for agents to use for client prospecting. It could be a mobile app, web app, and/or micro-site that can be marketed for example in social media giving the consumer the ability to do their own education for life insurance, perform a needs analysis, run a quote, and apply for insurance while the agent is available at any time during the process for assistance.

An eBGA that is re-framing the entire life insurance sales ecosystem is BackNine Insurance and Financial Services. You can also classify BackNine as an insurtech company with two proprietary platforms designed to streamline the way in which life insurance agents, agencies, and consumers engage with their product and clients. Whether you own an agency or are an individual producer, their platforms can help agents turn their business into a fully digital solution to increase sales and improve client retention.

BackNine’s Quote & Apply platform is the first multi-carrier, consumer-facing e-application platform for life insurance. Agents can white label the software and use it on their own website or platforms, optimize their client onboarding processes, and ultimately monitor and scale their business 24/7. Users can also access quotes, compare rates, and file e-applications virtually and digitally. With Quote & Apply, anyone can apply for life insurance in under five minutes with their computer, tablet or smartphone, and be quoted with several policy options by answering only six questions (age, gender, height/weight, smoking history, and rating the person’s health on a scale of one to five). The agent can also send direct links to customers and they can shop multiple carriers and apply on their own time with ease.

Instead of the typical BGA website with multiple disparate tools, BackNine has created an agent platform called BOSS, which is a life insurance CRM empowering agents to monitor and manage their life insurance business across the board. The platform keeps agents updated on cases, and access to their commission statements. The dashboard is configurable for each agent’s preferences. BOSS allows agents to stay up-to-date on all of client activity and manage their data in real time. BOSS can also be utilized as an agency management system for outreach to new and existing clients and helps agents grow their life insurance book. The internal sales desk offers agents assistance in finding the appropriate products and carrier options for clients’ specific needs. Agents can also avoid client data dual-entry by integrating an existing AMS or CRM for all future life insurance transactions. These platforms are for both new agents and seasoned advisors who want to digitize their agency. The end result is maximized efficiency and more life insurance sales. You can learn more about BackNine by visiting http://www.back9ins.com.

Medicare Sales: An Upgraded Solution
These days, most Medicare consumers expect online access to carrier plan information, quoting, and even enrollment. For this to happen, insurers and agents must present digital access that better uses data, forms, and communication—or risk losing customers. Consumers aren’t the only ones asking for updates either. The old way of requiring agents to navigate legacy systems requiring paper applications, physical signatures, and clunky data transfers slows sales down and has agents looking elsewhere.

Many Medicare agents rate back-office and customer-facing digital tools as the top supports carriers should provide. Comparing the two, you can see why.

Traditional System

• Poor integration with agents and consumer data complicates workflows
• Relies on a semi-digital toolset, with extensive human intervention
• Outdated and slow processes frustrate
• Agent licensing compliance headaches

Digital Solutions

• Seamless digital connections with agents and consumers
• Easy access to data from multiple sources
• Efficient distribution and support for products
• Agent licensing compliance integration

The Benefits of Reshaping Operations
Research shows that carriers and agents who use digital technology are able to automate 50 to 60 percent of administrative operations and have expense ratios that are close to 40 percent less. Time saved reduces time to market, lowers prices, and improves profitability. Early adopters of better online tools are positioned for growth by meeting the digital demands of today and planning for tomorrow.

Knowing When It’s Time for an Upgrade
When any system starts to experience productivity issues, it may be a sign it’s time for an upgrade.

Other signs to look for include:

• Loss of sales year over year
• Increasing security concerns from customers and employees
• New products or services don’t easily fit into current systems
• Operations experience slow responses or even downtime
• Legacy systems not technically compatible with outside data sources

Updating current technology could mean the difference between keeping up or falling behind.

Trusty.care provided the information on Medicare platforms. They are a New York based InsurTech company working to improve efficiencies in distributing senior, individual, and ancillary products. By connecting the point of sale to the consumer’s needs, Trusty.care can radically improve consumers’ financial stability related to healthcare costs and decrease rapid disenrollment. Today they have over 50,000 agents and top FMOs using their platform.

I attend many webinars and now finally travel to industry conferences. Speakers love to use analogies when attempting to make comparisons to hammer home a point. Sometimes it connects and sometimes it is just too way out there for the audience to understand. Either way, in 2022 we have turned the corner in life insurtech from AI in underwriting and expansive use of electronic health records, to innovating the sales digital experience and renovating the life insurance value chain. Since we have turned the page, a metaphor would be more appropriate when describing the exciting innovations in life insurance technology. Here is my metaphor, “Life Insurtech in 2022 is a whole new highway.”

Five Ways to Renovate the Life Insurance Value Chain
The first week of March my company, InsurTech Express, exhibited at the iPipeline Connections conference in Las Vegas. At the conference, I met Hari Srinivasan, CEO, and Nicole Mwesigwa, co-founder and COO, of iCover. As I have said in previous Tech-Tock articles, data is the fuel driving innovation in the life insurtech space. iCover is an AI/algorithmic underwriting platform that assesses, prices and delivers life insurance in five minutes. With a built-in eApp, QUITM behavior-based questions and a proprietary decision engine, iCover can transform your new business process in 12 weeks.

By most measures life insurance is essential to household economic stability, but ownership fell in the last decade from 63 percent to 52 percent (these stats are from LIMRA Fast Stats Sept. 2021). So, what is preventing us from “connecting” with and “covering” more consumers? Lack of product innovation and the buying experience, which is too long and too complicated! The good news is we have the tools, the data, and the talent to change the trajectory of our industry. Here are five ideas that can be implemented in 2022!

• Offer a multi-channel distribution platform to reach consumers wherever and whenever they are primed to think about insurance and seamlessly connect them to a digital buying process. Include digital messages to keep the consumer engaged and informed about the application status and next steps.
• Revamp the eApp to use behavior-based vs. reflexive questions. This will make the purchase journey intuitive and fast. Fast means less than 10 minutes from app to offer for most consumers.
• Use data differently. Data functions to knock out apps or supplement the traditional underwriting process. Using data to detect non-disclosures and rate applications behind the scenes eliminates the uncomfortable task of fact-checking the consumer over the phone and increases opportunities to price applications on the spot.
• Install AI/Algorithmic underwriting to simultaneously assess applications and make decisions at the point-of-sale. A data-driven system maximizes auto-acceptance without compromising risk and is the flywheel for the entire buying process!
• Create a feedback loop for the AI decision platform. Whether online or offline, this loop will expedite learning, improve accuracy and increase straight-through processing rates. Data can come from multiple sources; consumer buying analytics, claims, post-issue DHR requests, manual underwriting decisions, application and admin surveillance activities.

Renovating the value chain does not have to be overwhelming, particularly when using an agile approach to manage incremental change. Choosing the right partner and solution, like iCover, also helps!

Effective Life Insurance Illustration System Implementations
Over the years working on various single carrier and multicarrier illustration systems, the implementation process includes critical pieces like the functionality and the user experience. When adding life insurance products to a platform there are three areas that are key to the implementation (Calc Engine, Reporting, and User Functionality). Some features in the illustration platform are already baked in, but other features such as how to select age, riders, and strategies, just to name a few, can be sensitive in ease of use and practicality in running the illustration. What most agents and BGAs may not realize is that it is not necessarily the vendor who may be the cause of a challenging user experience, but how the carrier did their implementation. The key to a successful implementation is to have advisor and BGA beta testers in the field before the launch.

“Modern and capable Illustration systems are absolutely critical for carriers, of any size and complexity, to both drive the sales process and enable the exponential benefits of a digital ecosystem,” says Lyndon Edwards, president of illustrate inc, a leader in providing illustrations, eApp, and other digital cloud-based solutions to the North American life insurance industry.

Edwards continues, “Illustration systems are much more today than they used to be, and they continue to evolve. In addition to providing accurate, instant, compliant, and secure information, today’s systems also need to be feature rich, integration capable, and future ready to deliver customer, user, and operational experience, all critical for carriers to attract agents, succeed, and grow in today’s market. Choosing a proven illustration partner with the actuarial, industry, and technology expertise required, to understand and deliver on specific carrier needs and requirements, will ensure and provide the continued innovation, evolution, and commitment in a constantly changing environment.”

More Innovation Using Electronic Health Records (EHR)
If you read my Broker World article in February, Electronic Health Records (EHR) For Life Underwriting Surging In 2022,” then you will see the rapid expansion of how EHR is being used in the life insurance industry. AdamsBridge understands the healthcare data and pharmaceutical industry which defines their expertise to retrieve and translate medical records from an industry that uses them for maximizing healthcare reimbursement, not for the interpretation needed for the life insurance Industry.

“We are the only organization in the industry to show and document the risks of using EHR records for risk assessment in life insurance, showing variances it has in ‘missing’ data compared to legacy APS records—variances that could range several tables. It is not about your ‘hit’ rate, but the ‘useability’ rate of the data,” said Peter Iras, executive director of AdamsBridge.

Iris continued, “We further redefined the logic used by other summary/data providers with the industry’s first LOMA certified summary team. Another first for the life industry—a customer driven tier builder platform where the clients can build their own summary. Imagine getting the medical data of your choice digitized, extracted, and sorted the way you want and not by some off the shelf or plagiarized version. Data that is searchable, sortable, chronological by body part, body system, key words, diagnosis, scripts, labs, or whatever method you want to use to gain that edge. Useful reports designed by you that focus on impairments with their underlying factors, morbidity, diagnosis, prescriptions, labs, body limbs and specific body systems, delivered in any format, from any data aggregator, with even a customizable analysis focused on directional recommendations (decline or approve) for your underwriters or an underwriter snapshot so you can make easy directional decisions.”

Up until now, many InsurTech disruptors were start-ups steered by ambitious young people with impeccable technology credentials but limited knowledge and understanding of the life insurance industry. They typically arrive with a solution looking for a problem to fix and often stumble when confronted with regulatory and compliance obstacles as well as with the complexity of insurance distribution. The situation is now being reversed.

You can control your own destiny with web-enabled Lead Gen and Data-Driven Decisioning.

Raise your hand if you want more leads.

Hands up if you think your website could be better utilized to capture interested prospects.
Okay, last one. Hands in the air if you have felt an intuition about a strategy that could make a substantial impact on your business, but had no facts or metrics to back it up.

If you have any hands above your head right now, read on. First, let’s talk lead generation. Lead gen has two primary impacts on your business: 1) the potential for new revenue and, 2) attraction and retention of agents. I have yet to encounter an agency that doesn’t want more leads. And with the right tools at their disposal, agencies can efficiently attract, capture, and distribute ample leads.

One of the biggest areas of lead capture opportunity? Your website. Think of your website as a storefront. When you don’t provide a virtual shop window for prospective clients to browse, you forfeit the chance to draw them inside. A consumer-based quote engine on your website can be a game-changer for your agency in 2022. You can increase lead volume, leverage existing CRM technology as you transfer leads to agents, and even jump-start an application. Sound interesting? Check out this clip: https://www.ipipeline.com/bgas-jump-start-your-lead-gen-in-the-new-year/.

Next up, data-driven insights and decisioning. Most agencies are short on resources—people, time, and money to examine strategies, test and analyze, execute, and improve. In the absence of humans, more hours in the day, and an influx of unexpected funding, the differentiator is data. What if you could look across your carrier partners and know where your cycle times are shortest and longest? What training would you prioritize for employees if you could pinpoint where execution breakdowns were occurring in case management? What if you could measure agent productivity by premium and cycle time? What if you were able to see that by reducing cycle time by five days, your placement ratio would go up by 13 percent?

If you were able to use metrics to drive decisioning, you would gain invaluable insights into your business, enabling you to confidently take courses of action using the resources of teams three times your size. Data is that powerful. And the best part? You don’t have to be a data scientist to utilize it. Check out this video of three BGAs discussing the results of their data-driven decisioning: https://www.ipipeline.com/bga-panel-how-data-is-driving-better-performance-more-business/.

Small adjustments can make big impacts. Ask yourself the questions above in a few months…and let’s get those hands down! These video links and metrics were provided by Roy Goodart who is head of product management at iPipeline, offering an end-to-end ecosystem for fully digitizing the life insurance industry. iPipeline provides distributors with the technology needed to differentiate themselves from their competitors by offering a comprehensive end-to-end platform. They provide you with the agent tool sets that a modern workforce needs in order to process business quickly in this ever-innovating market.

Agent Tools Using AI Predictive Data for Product Recommendations
Sproutt is a new kind of life insurance provider who is transforming how life insurance is purchased and distributed. I met the Sproutt team at the LIDMA conference last October in Denver. I found their sales model coupled with their Insurtech platform very innovative. I asked Sproutt about their technology: Using proprietary AI technology, Sproutt’s Quality of Life Index (QLI) identifies consumers’ “hidden” healthy behaviors to provide a personalized life insurance buying experience, in 10-minutes or less. Sproutt has established itself as a key player within the direct-to-consumer space, and following its rapid growth and technology evolution in the last two years, it is now pioneering agent distribution within the insurtech sector.

Sproutt is bridging the gap between traditional distribution and modern technology, providing agents a competitive advantage. They do things differently at Sproutt. “We put agents first and we provide them the tools and latest technology to be successful,” said Assaf Henkin, co-founder and president. Sproutt covers the full spectrum of omni-channel distribution including independent agents, brokerage, P&C, banks and wire-houses, along with partnerships and affinity groups.

Sproutt’s agent platform includes proprietary Smart Routing technology, which can accurately match clients to a personalized product that best meets their needs and buying preferences. The agent platform includes instant issue term and permanent life insurance covering protection and accumulation sale scenarios while enabling agents to reach clients in a much more effective manner. “We have fully integrated the needs of a life insurance agent into our platform and leveraged our proprietary technology to provide a best in class agent experience,” said Henkin.

As a data-first company, Sproutt is leveraging historical and real time data to provide a predictive experience for both agents and consumers. The ability to accurately predict customer needs, confirm that with agents’ input, and recommend the right product is extremely valuable in a digital buying scenario where speed, transparency, and responsiveness go a long way. Sproutt is preparing to launch a new, fully-redesigned agent portal that will feature a “next generation” series of products all hosted on the company’s predictive data platform later this year.

More Life Digital Sales Platforms and Using Behavioral Science
New from Covr Financial Technologies is Covr Pro, which brings Covr’s digital life insurance technology to independent distribution across multiple channels and agency business models. Originally built for Covr’s 30,000 financial advisor partners, Covr Pro gives independent agents, agencies and producer groups a new digital toolset to rapidly grow their business while future-proofing their practice.

In addition to term and permanent life insurance solutions, Covr Pro offers asset-based long term care, disability, and will introduce an annuities path from more than 30 top-rated carriers including Prudential, Protective and AIG. The fully digital experience also includes needs analysis tools, multi-carrier quoting, case status tracking, and policy delivery and review. The platform is the only one in the industry to offer drop ticket for 100 percent of the available products.

Covr Pro also gives agents access to Covr’s team of industry experts with omni-channel support and assistance. Signing up is easy and fast—agents can create an account and submit business immediately, and get paid some of the most highly competitive commissions in the industry today.

InsurAware™ is an end-to-end digital distribution platform built on state-of-the-art data analytics, behavioral science, and artificial intelligence which aims at matching clients with cost-effective insurance policies provided by leading policy providers. InsurAware™ is equally beneficial for financial institutions, as it leverages the power of precise digital marketing coupled with the accuracy of industry data processed with state-of-the-art AI to become a one-stop solution for the customer acquisition journey.

I asked the InsurAware team, “What are the market trends?” They replied, “We are seeing traditional and digital carriers coming to market with truly end-to-end digital products complete with APIs. Helping to identify the consumers that have the ability and intent to purchase while also providing agents with digital tools to better match these prospects with the right solutions for their specific needs will be table stakes in the future. The ability to take customers and agents through the fulfillment journey, achieved through using data services, data analytics, and state-of-the-art flexible rules engines and fulfillment systems, is becoming table stakes as well. Low code configuration tools are increasing speed to market and accelerating the pace of digital transformation within carriers and distributors. Real time interface techniques through APIs and SDKs are making automated underwriting and the intelligent quoting process much easier.”