Tag: eDelivery

Electronic Delivery of Documents

What’s New In Life And Annuity eApp, Illustrations, Mobile And Self-Service

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By Ken Leibow – March 1, 2021

Originally Published in Broker World Magazine

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Life and annuity technology solutions are growing in both innovation and in the number of platforms that are available in the marketplace. Today I want to give you a taste of the latest stats on eApp and eDelivery for BGAs; a new simple method of presenting complex illustrations; a mobile modular option for carriers for eApp and illustrations; and self-service tools for policyholders.

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The Latest Stats and Trends on eApp and eDelivery for BGAs

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It was a no brainer to reach out to iPipeline whose eApp platform (iGO) has the biggest footprint in the BGA space. They provided the latest stats and trends in eApp and eDelivery: “Why does going digital today really matter? Over the past year, we’ve seen our world turned upside down in every way. In a business where relationships rule and in person meetings have been the key to selling more, the insurance industry was quickly turned on its head. Many carriers were left struggling with how to get paper polices out the door, agents were scrambling to figure out how to work better with consumers, and consumers were afraid to meet with anyone at the kitchen table anymore.

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The good news is that the industry, although mildly prepared, is pulling through. During these times, we’ve seen a huge surge in adoption by brokerage agencies to push digital processes even further. In 2020, dozens of insurance carriers started a process to bring live more eApps and more ePolicy deliveries. Here are some benefits for you to think about, as a brokerage agency, on why having a digital strategy is essential.”

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eApp

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– Shortens the application cycle time by 50 percent.

– Average cost reduction over paper 37 percent.

– Offers client collaboration where the agent and consumer can both work on the same digital app together—keeping the relationship, and the app, alive.

– On Behalf Of—allows case managers to take over the eApp process for their agent to provide more value in the process.

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ePolicy Delivery

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– Shortens the cycle time by 23 days on average.

– Increases placement ratios by 11 percent on average.

– Has an over 90 percent consumer adoption rate.

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“2020 was a wakeup call for everyone in our industry, especially brokerage agencies whose agents were traditionally paper-based. iPipeline, one of the biggest players digitizing these processes, saw a huge growth in some areas, in both eApp and eDelivery by you and your peers last year—more than 70 percent growth in eApps, and nearly 300 percent growth in ePolicy delivery.”

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“Sales-Stories” Simplifying Life and Annuity Illustrations for Agents and Consumers

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Today there are three exciting sales model transformation dynamics taking place in the InsurTech life and annuity space. First, the consumer experience of financial products is being driven towards simplicity, transparency and an easy-to-understand digital experience. Second, the traditional wholesaling and agent model is on the cusp of radical transformation, shifting towards a hybrid (cyborg) agent/wholesaler who is digitally enabled with interactive educational sales tools. Third, the “pre-sale to application experience” is rapidly driving towards a “single experience” digital workflow, from quote to pre-sale proposal to eApp submission. A seamless experience completed in minutes, “live” and during the engagement with the prospective client. These three strategic shifts are core drivers to meeting the new FinTech “experience threshold.” and will be critical to sustainable growth for the life and annuity sector going forward.

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I am very excited to say that Ensight’s new “Sales Story” platform module has made a significant leap forward in helping to drive these industry shifts. Working in partnership with leading life, LTCI and annuity insurance carriers and national distributors, Ensight™ has created a configurable sales experience engine, empowering the rapid creation of a broad range of different types of consumer-centric sales experiences—based on rich content and personalized client illustration data. For instance, a “Sales Story” may take the form of a new engaging product concept to support a critical market launch, encapsulating the product benefits and performance in an intuitive, personalized interactive microsite. Or a “story” may take the form of an online product training course. Or a step-by-step sales script to walk a client through a proposal at the point of sale. The Ensight “Sales Stories” engine is a highly configurable platform, enabling stories to be customized for each carrier’s or distributor’s sales model.

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Ensight’s “Sales Stories” are also modernizing the traditional “sales concept” experience. The most successful financial professionals engage the client based on financial need and “story selling,” the art of “telling a story with the aim of engaging your client, so they remember, connect, and perceive the benefits of acquiring your product or service.” “Concept-selling” has been at the heart of life, LTCI and annuity sales for decades. Ensight has modernized the art of concept selling for the digital era. Think of an elegantly designed, interactive supplement retirement, Cost of Waiting, or “Life vs Another Asset” concept—that a client can digitally play with to drive understanding.

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Finally, Ensight’s ”Sales Stories” also increase agent sales effectiveness (e.g. higher sales closing rates) for carriers and distributors with agent-based networks, providing the financial professional with a best practice, compliant and engaging (interactive) sales script to run a meaningful client conversation. Every captive agent network is seeking to make every agent, whether new to the business or not, a top selling agent in the field. Similarly, insurance carriers are seeking to digitally scale the expertise, education and pitch of the wholesaler. Ensight™ Sales Stories is the digital sales enablement platform to deliver on both.

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Life and Annuity True Mobile Illustrations and eApp for Carriers

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illustrate inc is proud to have recently launched OPUS Mobile, a downloadable app for individual life insurance carriers. OPUS Mobile is designed and customized to be carrier specific, with the core functionality centering on instant calculations and quotes for virtually any life or annuity product for on-screen visualization and report generation.

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Lyndon Edwards, president of illustrate inc says, “Data shows that mobile users live in the app world and that downloaded apps capture much higher levels of user attention and usage than going through a mobile browser. Accessibility, design, user experience, and overall functionality are built specifically for the app, and users are very familiar and comfortable in that environment.”

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While the entire OPUS line of web solutions—illustrations, eApps, and more—are responsive in design, meaning they will automatically adjust and reorientate to virtually any device and screen size, OPUS Mobile takes it to that next level.

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“Our approach was to take OPUS Mobile beyond the core powerful quoting and reporting functionality through providing the opportunity to add high value features including quote compare, user preferences and tools, product and marketing information, needs analysis, push notifications, and more. Built using a single code base for both Apple and Android, OPUS Mobile is integration ready and highly secure.”

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A major U.S. carrier has recently launched OPUS Mobile to their thousands of agents across the country. This custom branded carrier app is fully integrated with other company apps and systems, covers multi-channel requirements, and has a web service to allow approved users access on their desktop.

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Carriers Deploying Self-Service Solutions for Life Insurance Policyholders

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Sureify, an established insurtech provider, finds that roadblocks like legacy systems that don’t pair well with the new digital capabilities and a complex product line that isn’t typically intuitive are holding some insurers back from jumping into the digital waters where self-service is concerned. But perhaps the biggest hurdle remains confidence in the capability and security of self service.

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“Life insurance agents have historically referred policyholders to call centers—the former pinnacle of self-service—because they had confidence in the ability of those call center employees to answer questions and solve problems,” explained Dustin Yoder, Sureify’s CEO and founder. “In 2021, we are helping insurers build the same kind of confidence into their web and mobile capabilities. Sureify’s goal is to help carriers’ reps and agents feel 100 percent comfortable referring their customers to these digital platforms, like LifetimeService, to find answers and solve problems. Once that confidence is achieved, those agents can focus their time and effort on building and growing business.”

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– LifetimeAcquire: Powers omnichannel sales capabilities that drive increased placement rates via quoting, e-application, automated underwriting and e-delivery.

– LifetimeEngage: Uses multiple engagement methods and analytics to foster a lifelong digital relationship with policyholders, leading to a greater lifetime value for each policyholder.

– LifetimeService: Enables insurers to provide a comprehensive digital self-service suite for their policyholders.

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Sureify is a SaaS platform for the life and annuity industry that provides the digital technology experience that today’s customers expect. Sureify’s platform, Lifetime, is a modular, highly configurable set of software solutions that sits on top of policy administration systems. Lifetime delivers a best-in-class experience that modernizes sales, policyholder servicing and innovative customer engagement.

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The solution platform landscape for life and annuities is growing and the workflow models are multiplying. We are now seeing new innovative digital point of sales solutions that not only help close the sale but are designed for our new virtual world. Even if agents and consumers are not traveling, they still spend more time on their mobile devices than their laptops. As the Millennials are becoming the target consumer, self-service technology solutions are growing in popularity.

eDelivery So Sweet!

eDeliverySweet

A while back I attended the annual event of a large independent broker dealer. It was a spectacle that rivaled any industry event I’ve been to in years. There were easily thousands of people in attendance and venue was filled with the outstanding entertainment, speakers and training.

 

While I was there I had the rare opportunity to have dinner with some senior level executives at the broker dealer and their carrier partners along with a half dozen or so of their top advisors. Amidst some jovial conversation and the occasional joke, one of the advisors blurted out, “I’ve got a real problem with you guys”. The table went silent, for what seemed to be an eternity, until a polite young lady from one of the carriers replied, “well let’s see if we can fix that”. He went on to say that he felt like the carrier and broker dealer have shifted the costs of delivering annuity contracts and life polices to his office. Almost immediately another advisor chimed in with more comments, then asked if the advisor still wanted to be kept in the loop to ensure his client received the documents and completed the process?

 

The debate surrounding this topic continued for about half an hour where issues like cost, time, compliance and lack of follow-up were all discussed. The waiter must have thought the table needed a little “time out” as he made the rounds twice filling up wine glasses. The young lady with the carrier sat quietly through the discussion, just listening. As the dessert arrived, she asked the group “what if you could have your cake and eat it, too”? She went on to talk about sending annuity contracts and life polices electronically to all the parties in the distribution channel and ultimately the client. “Other industries have adopted eSignature and eDelivery and some have equally as many, if not more, regulatory issues as ours”, she said. “The cost savings can be immense and the time savings dramatic, all while keeping everyone in the loop…in real time”. This thought seemed to resonate with everyone at the table as the group pondered how this type of process would help their unique situations.

 

I can assure you; many similar conversations are taking place daily around the water coolers, dinner meetings and conference rooms today. Electronic document delivery is a hot topic as more companies are looking to streamline processes, reduce expenses and improve the overall customer experience. So, lets take a minute to review some of the benefits and metrics around the next evolutionary step in the delivery process for the insurance sector.

 

More Than Just Polices and Contracts. When looking at eDelivery it’s important to note that there are a lot of documents besides the life policy and annuity contract that carrier could be sending electronically to save time, money and resources. Examples would be: both the pre and post sale prospectus, supplemental life questionnaires that were missed during the application process, client statements, annual disclosures and more. Although required, these documents in a paper process can be burdensome and costly.

 

Staying in The Loop. Everyone, no matter where you sit within the distribution channel wants to know where the document(s) stands once its issued for delivery. Has it been sent out, has it been received, has the client completed any necessary outstanding paperwork and has it been sent back to the carrier? Why? Because in most cases no one gets paid, in the distribution channel, until it’s complete. While in other instances, there may be big risks with areas like free look periods when possession cannot be proven. Electronic delivery satisfies this need by providing each stakeholder notifications at key points in the cycle while everything is logged for future review.

 

Cost Savings. There have been many studies conducted over the years on how much it costs to deliver insurance policies and annuity contracts. Estimates vary, but let’s take the averages around a life insurance policy for example. The cost is about $35 for the carrier, $30 for the distributor (if it goes to the distributor first or it has internal compliance added) and anywhere from $25 for the advisor if the policy is mailed and up to $200 if it’s hand delivered. That’s a lot of coin adding up to be tens of millions annually for the industry! Electronic delivery dramatically reduces expenses, in most cases by nearly 75%. How much could that save your company?

 

Time. We’re all pressed for it these days; with so many things that need to be done, there never seems to be enough of it to go around. Time is precious and when it comes to the delivery process, it’s critical. Each day that goes by brings additional risk. In the paper world, it takes about 27 days for a life insurance policy to get returned to the carrier. Electronic delivery is showing a completed cycle time of under 5 days on average with just over 10% being completed within 24 hours. This time saving is equating to a 5-6% placement lift for new business!

 

Compliance. In some circles “compliance” can be a dirty word, but lets face it, they play a very important part in ensuring we stay out of trouble. Additional paperwork means there is more likelihood of missing a step which can linked to big fines. Because an electronic delivery system can be rules driven, it can force specific forms and require eEignatures throughout the process. This type of platform guarantees compliance requirements are met and provides a detailed history of what took place.

 

Better Customer Experience. Companies all over the world are searching for ways to make the customer experience a better one. They’re looking at how to streamline processes and make these easier, quicker and more user friendly. Our world of selling financial products to consumers is often laden with many steps, start and stops, delays and paperwork that takes an attorney to understand. With eDelivery we can simplify the process, make it easy to understand and quick to complete thus raising the satisfaction levels and our placement ratios.

 

Green Thumb. Consumers are more than ever are expecting companies to provide options other than paper. In fact, its been shown that more than 80% of consumers opt for eDelivery when asked.

Consumers not only see the benefit of eliminating big binders to hold important documents but see it as a way to reduce the damage associated with printing these documents on our environment. It’s estimated that the insurance and financial sector uses more than 53 billion (that’s right folks, that’s billions) pieces of paper each year for documents like life insurance policies, annuity contracts, prospectus and more. Electronic delivery can dramatically reduce this number helping reduce carbon footprints and maintain a healthy environment for future generations.

 

It’s time for our industry to finally “have its cake and eat it, too”. Electronic delivery can solve a number of issues we currently experience using paper processes. Each party can reap the benefits of time and cost savings while providing a positive customer experience. It’s up to us to get more organized and implement platforms to make it a reality.

For information on how you can be more involved in steering the direction of electronic delivery, join one of the many working committees in the industry such as the ones offered by ACORD, LIDMA or the LBTC.

 

#imabeliever

By Roy Goodart, roy@insurtechexpress.com