With the Coronavirus changing the way life insurance carriers, distributors and agents conduct business, selling insurance virtually requires powerful sales tools, critical business intelligence, and beautiful presentations. We are going to look at three innovative solutions that will help drive virtual sales of life permanent products.

Ensight™
Ensight™ presentations enable wholesalers, producers and financial advisors to engage in meaningful, interactive sales discussions–across any virtual meeting platform. Ensight’s single entry quoting and presentation platform supports all types of life insurance products on the market including term, guaranteed UL, indexed UL and variable UL. It supports 25 carriers and has over 150 plus products on it. Recently there has been a huge adoption in the market and it is being used to help with remote/e-selling for life insurance. This is big now with everyone operating remotely–and some of the new state guidelines are driving even faster adoption of Ensight’s platform.

Proven to help increase sales, Ensight’s platform is compliant and a huge timesaver. BGAs are also using it to recruit advisors that are now looking for advanced remote selling capabilities. Ensight’s recent weekly webinars on remote selling have been oversubscribed because everyone is being forced to sell remotely. The best part of the presentation tool is that it’s interactive. It allows the advisor to tell a story on the benefits of the policy.

CVP Analysis for Life Product Illustrations

• “Single-entry” efficiency for case design operations.
• Client (customer) centric case design workflow–the first Best Interest oriented workflow on the market.
• Integrated benchmarking comparison capabilities–based on live (actual) illustration data from the specific case design.

Regarding the Best Interest client-centric case design workflow, Ensight inverted the traditional case design workflow (*start with a product) to “start with the customer need/case design” and then using the platform intelligence to “identify the products that fit the actual case design.” This is significant, given the extension of the Best Interest Rule into life (e.g. NYDFS187).

Remote (Virtual Selling) Capabilities

• Ensight presentations are used by wholesalers, producers and financial advisors at the point of sale.
• Support all the core (most commonly used) concepts–Cost of Waiting; Supplemental Retirement; Term to Perm; IUL Stress Testing; “3 Ways To Fund.”
• Ensight also provides a full digital audit trail of the presentation (*and any iterations)–for compliance books and records.
• Ensight presentations are another plank of our support/enablement for the emerging Best Interest regulations–providing auditability of the point of sale discussion.
• Always incorporated is the actual carrier illustration for compliance reasons.

Generally, Ensight has found phenomenally positive response from Gen X and Millennial wholesalers, agents and advisors–who are seeking for a sales experience akin to “eMoney/MoneyGuidePro.” Broadly, Ensight focuses on “sales acceleration” which means a) driving sales growth through sales experience transformation, and b) enhancing compliance through digital auditability, rule engines and advanced hierarchical templating capabilities. Ensight’s aim is to help the industry broaden the appeal of the permanent life product portfolio–and wider accessibility for financial advisors and consumers.

Ebix WinFlex Analytics
This is a good lead in to Ebix WinFlex, which also integrates with Ensight. Helping to achieve market potential with over 16 million illustrations run annually, WinFlex touches virtually every permanent life case. Ebix has analyzed these illustrations to understand when and why products are (or aren’t) achieving their market potential. Thirty-four top life carriers A.M. Best “A” rated or better, with over 300 life products and 100,000+ users. Today I want to introduce you to a new solution platform: WinFlex Analytics.

Ebix WinFlex Analytics is a data analytics and alerts platform that gives insurance carriers and distributors an unprecedented picture of how their products are performing in the market. Analytics brings transparency to case design and pre-sales activity using behavioral data that goes beyond benchmarking. There is transparency for carriers. WinFlex Analytics analyzes actual producer behavior to help reflect how products are actually being framed during pre-sales. Carriers can use that information to accelerate revenue and market share growth by identifying sales activity trends that involve (or don’t involve) their product portfolios. Carriers can also minimize unnecessary costs by reacting to alerts about undesirable product illustration activity.

Transforming product design, marketing, and distribution, Ebix Analytics helps your business stay ahead of the curve. From identifying key competitors through actual comparisons, to forecasting premium revenue and commission costs, to discovering growing and underserved market niches, Ebix takes the guesswork out of independent distribution, helping you understand the complex interrelationship between carriers, distributors, and consumers in ways you never could before.

Design with Trends in Mind
WinFlex Analytics allows you to design and prioritize products for growing and shrinking segments by displaying market illustration trends alongside the comparative trends of your own products. You can get answers to key product questions like these:

• What solve-for/solve-type inputs are most popular?
• What “max age” do producers use in their illustrations?
• How often do producers change a default value and use unique features on a product?
• How often do producers include riders on products versus industry averages, and how does that correlate to cases being issued?
• What interest/crediting rates are used on illustrations?
• Do producers illustrate overfunding, max, or partial cash funding on policies?

Transparency for Distributors
For brokers and other distributors, Analytics provides answers to questions that are fundamental to success. Who’s your real competition? Who are you being compared to? Where do you rank? Analytics can help you get answers.

Understand Sales Trends
With aggregate data from millions of illustrations, WinFlex Analytics provides a true look at how all brokers are selling insurance products.

• What products are they comparing?
• What sales strategy are they using?
• What solve options are they running?
• Do they project indexed universal life returns at a bear-market two percent or a bull-run seven percent?
• Are they doing a lifetime pay or short pay?
• Are they taking income?
• What riders are they adding?

Identify Product Trends
Just as important as understanding customer needs is knowing which products are hot in the market. WinFlex Analytics gives you a big-picture look at products that are new, trending, and gaining in popularity—and helps you understand the best way to match those products with customers’ needs.

Equisoft/Illustrate
Equisoft/illustrate is a flexible, user-friendly, multichannel solution for generating and comparing compliant quotes and illustrations. In Canada, it is the Gold Standard for life insurance illustrations. As individual life insurers look for ways to better compete on customer experience, illustration tools have become very important in the sales process. Recognized as the most user-friendly illustration system, it is designed for carriers who want to differentiate themselves by offering an outstanding and customized user experience to advisors and their clients. It has a growing presence in the U.S.

Configure once, distribute everywhere (both online web and an internet disconnected computer), same user experience on both connected and disconnected versions (user interface, reports, calculation logic, rates tables and rules)—mean lower implementation and maintenance costs. The platform features four components—Insurance Needs Analysis, Illustrations and Embedded Sales Strategies, Electronic Application and Policy Servicing, and Agent Portal – available separately or as part of Equisoft’s comprehensive SaaS solution.

Features for Equisoft/Illustrate:

• Access your quotes and illustrations from any device (phone, tablet or laptop).
• Strategies embedded within illustrations.
• Side by side quote comparisons.
• User interface product specific design, not generic.
• Integrates easily with CRMs, eApp, agent portals, and policy admin systems.
• Quick automated rate updates.

Equisoft/Illustrate allows advisors to easily quote and illustrate more advanced and complex products, including variable life products, and embedded sales strategies. What differentiates Equisoft/Illustrate is that you have complete control over the user interface, easy integration with other sales platforms, and the templates are insurance product specific.

In closing, I want to state that introducing carriers, distributors, and agents to new technologies and innovative technology solution platforms is a key objective of the Tech-Tock column. Learning how you can be more efficient, cut costs, and grow your sales is the value that these new innovations bring to the table. Using business intelligence, easy plug-in integration between platforms, and enhancing the sales experience for the client is what these three solutions provide.