Tag: Equisoft

Consumer Direct Life eApp While Maintaining The Agent Ecosystem

By Ken Leibow – May 1, 2021
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We are hearing new terms like eBGAs and eRetailers for the sale of insurance products. Putting the research, education, quoting, and electronic insurance application submission process in the hands of the consumer while maintaining the agent ecosystem is the new model for marketing and selling insurance. This insurance sales model is growing in popularity. The type of insurance products on the direct-to-consumer platforms include: Simplified term insurance, final expense, guaranteed income, HMA, disability insurance, critical illness, and, yes, even cross-selling to property and casualty. More product types continue to be simplified for this sales model like guaranteed universal life, long term care insurance, and Medicare supplemental insurance. Why is this model growing significantly in 2021? There are three reasons: Social media, Millennials, and COVID-19.

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In the U.S.A, the average time spent on social media is two hours and 25 minutes daily. The most effective medium for marketing today is through social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others. Americans also spend about 5.3 hours daily on their mobile devices. This is an indicator that the platforms you use for quoting insurance and marketing should either be a native mobile app, hybrid mobile app, or mobile browser optimized Web App. Millennials, ages 25-40 born between 1981 and 1996, grew up with access to technology, online retail, and the sharing economy; therefore, they exhibit a discernable preference for experiences over product when spending time and money. Eighty percent of Millennials read reviews and do their own research before making a purchasing decision. They will ask for help when needed after they already have attempted the research. The target market of Millennials make up 72.1 million Americans. Yes, Millennials spend about 5.7 hours daily on their smartphones.

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Since COVID-19 hit in 2020, the traditional method of selling insurance has relegated consumers to stay home and life agents to sell remotely. This has resulted in the acceleration of virtual tools, Artificial Intelligence (AI) for automated underwriting, and building out an easy consumer experience while still having an insurance advisor available for assistance when needed. Insurance advisors are given the software solutions and websites for marketing direct to consumers by a wholesaler like a BGA, IMO or GA at little or no cost. These direct-to-consumer tools are used to educate, quote, and have the consumer submit an insurance application direct while the agent and his/her upline receive commissions from the carrier. The consumer has easy access to an insurance advisor or call center for assistance during every step of the process from pre-sales to completing the insurance application. If a life insurance distributor did not develop these consumer tools in-house, then they are using a solution provider. The distributor or carrier purchases a license to use the consumer-direct software solutions, which can be used as a recruiting tool for agents. The huge advantage is that this enables multi-channel penetration like property and casualty shops, banks, health agents, and life insurance direct marketers. The formula for success is all about the consumer experience!

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Consumer Engaging Solutions
Covr Financial Technologies’ digital, white-labeled platforms integrate seamlessly with financial brands to provide life, long term care, disability, and supplemental health solutions from top carriers to their clients in a simple, turnkey way. AI-driven tools, a digital advice model and omni-channel sales support seamlessly blend high-tech and high-touch. Covr is dedicated to transforming the insurance purchase process from something that was previously slow and paper-based to an experience that is fast, simple and digital. Covr currently serves over 25,000 financial advisors and over 20 million customers across over 30 financial institutions.

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Among its new product launches are Covr’s multi-carrier term life insurance platform, which includes a growing number of instant-purchase journeys, and the proprietary LoanMatch Protector product. With Covr’s multi-carrier term insurance platform customers can apply for life insurance online in minutes, with real-time quotes available from the leading insurance carriers. Leading the way in the journey are product offerings from Bestow, Haven Life, Banner Life and Americo, which all offer fully digital, instant-decision capability and Covr’s technology to help clients find the product that fits best for them.

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LoanMatch Protector mirrors the remainder of an existing mortgage, small business loan or other debt. The coverage adjusts to the client’s precise need, saving consumers up to 30 percent and offering the market-leading ability to complete the entire process in 15 minutes. Covr’s industry-leading digital life insurance platform integrates seamlessly into a financial institution’s existing website or other distribution model. This allows these financial institutions to offer a broad range of life insurance products from the leading insurance carriers to their customers. Today’s consumers expect choice, simplicity and speed when purchasing life insurance, and Covr’s technology is tailored to those demands.

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Sureify’s Lifetime Platform is made up of three solutions: LifetimeAcquire, LifetimeService, and LifetimeEngage. LifetimeAcquire powers omnichannel sales capabilities that drive increased placement rates via quoting, e-application and automated underwriting. LifetimeService enables insurers to deploy a comprehensive digital self-service solution for their inforce business. And lastly, LifetimeEngage creates insights to foster a lifelong digital relationship with policyholders through multiple forms of engagement and analytics, leading to greater value for each policyholder. Sureify’s LifetimeEngage can help BGAs connect with policyholders in a meaningful, personalized, cost-effective way and engage with every customer in a way that helps ensure protection and maximize lifetime value. Rather than only having access to standard policy transaction data, Sureify’s LifetimeEngage platform delivers real time, actionable insights based on life events, interests, and personalized needs creating an organic source of cross-selling and upselling opportunities that strengthen the customer and agent relationship.

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Other Consumer eApp Models
Consumers watch over 500 million hours of video daily. Imagine engaging with your clients with a Virtual Video Quoter. Well Employee Pooling (EP) has created Consumer Direct Insurance Tools (CDIT). An agent or carrier can create personalized videos about their products and educate the consumer on the importance of life insurance. CDIT is white labeled with options for you to select color and design. The videos can walk the consumer through an instant quote and an eApp. This is a great recruiting tool for BGAs. It can be co-branded for property and casualty shops, banks, and health agents. Of course, it is used by advisors for lead generation.

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ApplicInt has an eApp solution called U*Complete. The power of this platform is the flexibility of the workflow model. An agent can run a quote, start a life insurance application, and then hand it off to a client to complete. U*Complete can also be integrated into a carrier’s website in a consumer direct model. ApplicInt is well known for fulfillment process software solutions like CallComplete, used at a carrier or paramed provider’s call center. They also have a digital paramed used by top providers like APPS. U*Complete is seamlessly plugged into the end-to-end life insurance electronic application process.

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The Power of APIs
Solution providers are investing their research and development money into Application Programming Interface (API), which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. Equisoft/apply is an easy to use, sales flow oriented eApp wizard for electronic insurance applications resulting in fast and seamless policy approvals used by insurance advisors. Equisoft is the king of APIs, first building their eApp to easily integrate with a carrier’s back-office policy admin system using an API. They also have an agent and client portal platform that has an API that makes it seamless to plug in third-party applications and data. The eApp engine of products rules, mapping data to the life insurance application forms and sending data and forms to the carrier can be accessed by a user interface (UI) whereby a carrier or distributor can build a consumer facing experience for eApp.

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No Code eApp is a self-service model. Management Research Services (mrs) for example has created an administration tool that makes it quick and easy to set up mapping the eApp questions to the life application forms and configure all the product rules without having the vendor to program it for you. The mrs API makes it extremely easy for you to build the UI frontend on your website. This is a low cost and speed-to-market life eApp solution.

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The industry has recognized the importance of APIs. The Life Distribution Technology Committee (LDTC) kicked off a project in 2021 to standardize APIs for life insurance.

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Tying it all together with Mobile and Social Media
I provided some powerful statistics about how many Americans and how much time is spent daily using their mobile devices and specifically for the purpose of social media. The vendors of these consumer tools for insurance understand that their design needs to work on all devices and have optimization for the best experience possible on a smartphone or tablet like an iPad. The power of the API for eApp is that the user interface can be developed on a mobile app and a web app. An agent, for example, creates a marketing campaign targeting a specific demographic on Facebook, and then there is a link to the consumer insurance tool. The consumer runs a quote and applies for insurance in one seamless experience. The agent and his/her upline get paid their commissions.

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How Insurance Distributors Can Provide Transformative Solutions to Advisor Productivity

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The distributor opportunity to transform advisor practices

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The insurance distributor value proposition for advisors is built on a foundation of helping remove the barriers that restrict practice growth, create headaches and lower profitability. They already do a great job providing case management support, marketing support and access to carriers, but there is an overlooked opportunity to unlock advisor productivity and strengthen relationships.

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The opportunity arises from a very specific advisor challenge.

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The insurance advisor challenge: when growth outstrips inefficient processes

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Financial advisors seeking to dramatically increase the value of their book of business do a great job of creating plans for finding more prospects and meeting more of each current client’s needs. They look for ways to optimize processes, improve productivity and drive agency growth.

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However, even advisors who have set a clear vision and defined a plan for achieving their growth targets can run into trouble when growth outstrips processes. The irony is that, it’s all too easy for advisors to enjoy growth in their business, but then see it choked off because of workflow-related obstacles and slow-downs. Sometimes it’s the simple problems that shut down grand ideas.

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Download the full case study. Click here.

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Despite all the work an advisor may have done to put staff, structure and systems into place to kick-start their growth engine—if they are still reliant on manual, paper-based approaches to uncovering client needs, too much time is spent on each step in the sales process with each client.

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Why legacy financial planning software can create its own bottlenecks

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Financial planning software tools provided by carriers and vendors at some point in the past, are better than relying on jury-rigged Excel solutions, but it’s still not always good enough. Older solutions are less automated, and still require too many manual steps. They may be able to get the job done, but are cumbersome to use, don’t integrate with existing CRM and distributor or carrier systems, and require double entry of client data.

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It’s not unusual for an advisor’s assistant to spend 45 minutes collecting information from a client and entering it in their older, financial planning software tool. And then, the advisor may still need to review the results and tailor the recommendations.

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Accelerating the in-flow of new prospects brings with it a corresponding increase in the number of client discovery initiatives. And this turns out to be a cap on growth for some advisors. The math is simple; the amount of time each discovery takes, times the number of clients. Once that number becomes larger than a few hours a day, it’s like turning the advisor’s practice into a headwind. Everything slows down. Becomes hard. At a certain point, prospecting becomes secondary, and the growth curve flattens.

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These bottlenecks mean that advisors are reduced to making money in their business based on the time they can spend with a client (which is a limited resource) rather than based on the value they can deliver.

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Largely manual or inefficient processes create a form of business risk. Especially in a competitive marketplace where growth and being able to carve out a significant niche are vitally important. What advisor in the prime of their career would be satisfied with just maintaining their status quo?

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How distributors can provide transformative solutions for advisors that want to increase productivity

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The answer isn’t for advisors to hire more staff in an attempt to accommodate manual processes that are suffocating growth. Instead, this is an opportunity for distributors to deliver significant value for their advisors by providing an effective solution for eliminating roadblocks.

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To find out more, read the case study

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Insights Author

Charles-Pedneault

Charles Pedneault

Vice President, Insurance Distribution Solutions

See more insights from Charles

Contact Charles

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National Western Life Insurance Company (NWL®) launches Equisoft/manage, a flexible cloud-based policy administration system

Designed for quick and easy transformations, Equisoft/manage is a turnkey cloud-hosted (SaaS) solution using well-established, production-ready digital business processes to enable quick and easy transformations. (CNW Group/Equisoft)

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Fueling an aggressive digital transformation plan, NWL® launches a significant system modernization initiative together with the introduction of a new Fixed Indexed Annuity product.

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PHILADELPHIA, PA, April 6, 2021 – Equisoft announced today the successful implementation of phase one of its cloud-based policy administration platform that will support NWL’s Life and Annuity operations across the full policy lifecycle. The new platform, along with the new NWL® ChoiceOptimizer Fixed Indexed Annuity product, went live in February.

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Subsequent phases of this large modernization initiative will further support NWL’s objective to design, refine and enhance product and policy services in a nimble, costeffective implementation environment developed to meet the diverse, changing needs of our distribution force and policyholders.

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Designed for quick and easy transformations, Equisoft/manage is a turnkey cloud-hosted (SaaS) solution using well-established, production-ready digital business processes to enable quick and easy transformations. It includes enhanced New Business and selfservice portals designed for advisers and customers, along with an industry-leading core administration capability – the Oracle Insurance Policy Administration (OIPA).

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“In today’s rapidly evolving marketplace, we need to be proactive and extremely responsive to the needs of our policyholders and agents,” said Greg Owen, SVP & CIO at National Western Life. “Implementing a flexible and scalable policy administration platform with a user-friendly servicing portal was a key component in our strategy. This is the first phase of a multi-phase initiative that will transform NWL’s business into an efficient digital model. We look forward to seeing the successful completion of the entire transformation initiative.”

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Headquartered in Austin, Texas, National Western Life Insurance Company offers a broad portfolio of high-quality life insurance and annuity products, providing professional and friendly service to its policyholders and agents.

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“This first go-live marks a major milestone in NWL’s modernization journey,” said Mark DePhillips, Senior Vice President, USA at Equisoft. “Equisoft/manage provides NWL with a best-in-class administration platform that will enable them to quickly implement new products and efficiently service their agents and policyholders. We are proud to be NWL’s strategic partner in this important modernization endeavor.”

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About National Western Life

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National Western Life Group, Inc. is the parent organization of National Western Life Insurance Company, which is the parent organization of Ozark National Life Insurance Company, both stock life insurance companies in aggregate offering a broad portfolio of individual universal life, whole life and term insurance plans, as well as annuity products. As of June 30, 2020, the Company maintained consolidated total assets of $12.4 billion, consolidated stockholders’ equity of $2.2 billion, and combined life insurance inforce of $22.5 billion.

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About Equisoft

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Founded in 1994, Equisoft is a global provider of advanced insurance and investment digital solutions. Recognized as a valued partner by over 75 of the world’s leading financial institutions in 15 countries, Equisoft offers innovative front-end applications, extensive back-office services and unique data migration expertise. The firm’s flagship products include a SaaS policy administration solution, CRM, financial needs analysis, financial planning, asset allocation, fund and portfolio analysis, quotes and illustrations, electronic application, agency management systems, as well as customer, agent and broker portals. Equisoft is also Oracle’s largest and most experienced partner for the OIPA platform. With its business-driven approach, deep industry knowledge, innovative technology, and some 500 experts based in the USA, Canada, Chile, Colombia, South Africa, India and Australia, Equisoft helps its clients tackle any challenge in this era of digital disruption.

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Media resource: Jean-François Parent, PR & Communications Manager, Equisoft Jean-Francois.Parent@Equisoft.com, +1 888 989 3141, ext. 70141

The Acceleration Of E-Engagement For Life And Health Like Medicare Supplemental Insurance

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By Ken Leibow

Originally Published in Broker World Magazine April 1, 2021

 

COVID-19 has forced independent distribution into e-Engagement for life insurance and health related insurance products. Some technology vendors in the life insurance space have enhanced, configured, and marketed their solution platforms to support health products like Medicare supplemental insurance, long term care insurance, critical illness, and disability income insurance.

 

Medicare is now the fastest-growing segment of the health insurance market, with 10,000 baby boomers aging into the program every day. Medicare enrollment is expected to soar between 2021 and 2029, reaching 77 million enrollees by the end of the decade. That’s an increase of 1.5 million new enrollees each year. With that said, many have to make the decision of what plan they choose: Traditional Medicare and a supplemental insurance policy, often referred to as Medigap, which sees about 60 percent of the market share, or a Medicare Advantage Plan at about 40 percent. Regardless, open enrollment season is a busy one!

 

Digitizing Paper MedSup Insurance Applications
PaperClip Mojo is a collection of the best of technologies paired with human validation to achieve 99.9 percent accuracy at unimaginable speed. A perfect solution for the onboarding of Medicare supplement (MedSup) new business, Mojo4Medicare, the tailored version, makes the open enrollment period the same as any other day. Mojo4Medicare is designed to process unlimited Medicare application packets for a consistent turnaround time. By collapsing the cycle time, you avoid backlogs and deliver faster commission payout. Mojo4Medicare is an e-app alternative.

“There is no longer a need to increase resources, both infrastructure and labor, only to decrease those after the enrollment period,” states Suzy Tuck, vice president of sales. “With Mojo4Medicare you will enjoy the ability to maintain the processing of new business as received, increase your focus on case management without additional resources and have no adoption challenge. Staff will love it and realize that the enrollment period is like any other day!”

 

No-Code eApp for MedSup Insurance
Management Research Services (MRS) is an industry leader in developing customized digital and automation solutions for clients and partners. Recently, MRS led efforts to develop and help a New York brokerage firm struggling to collect In Good Order (IGO) applications from Medicare supplemental insurance (MedSup) clients in a timely manner. The main driver of these issues was that the current processes relied on legacy workflows and technologies that were unable to electronically ingest and automate the large number of handwritten applications they received. This resulted in the reliance of manual entry which consumed a large amount of time, energy, and resources. As issues and delays began to pile up, it became obvious that a new process would have to be developed to fit the needs of their operating systems and clients. MRS was identified as a potential solution to this problem and, upon understanding the challenges, MRS leveraged its no-code platform to quickly create a customized e-App to better automate the workflow. The MRS e-App was able to dramatically improve the workflows in the following areas:

 

  • Collection of the applications 100 percent In Good Order (IGO).
  • Substantial increases in policy processing and acceptance.
  • A better way to follow-up on missing applicant data by sending a personal URL directly to the applicant so they could easily provide the missing data needed.

 

The immediate results seen were improvement of time to issuance, an increase in the number of applications completed IGO, and the streamlining of back office operational efficiencies that saved time, energy, and resources. Additional opportunities around customized reporting dashboards and better real-time data analysis were identified as ways to better serve agents in the field.

 

One of MRS’s core business principles is that once it onboards a new client into production, the work has just begun. MRS is constantly developing new features and capabilities and since customers are always on the most updated version of the platform, these innovations are immediately available to clients. For instance, MRS has identified new integration partners that will enable compliant video communication capabilities that better enable the remote sales processes critical in times like the COVID-19 crisis. MRS will continue to innovate and lead the charge in the future of no-code platforms that advance insurance automation and support stronger sales and operational efficiencies.

 

Life AMS Supports Health Products
Agency management systems (AMS) for life insurance have been retrofitted to support health products. I spoke with Equisoft, who has the number one agency management system in Canada, “Centralize,” which is now available in the USA. In Canada health products like critical illness and disability income insurance have been processed by MGAs on Centralize. In order to get a perspective of the problems solved for life distributors processing new business and commissions for multi-lines of business, Equisoft answered a series of questions about their AMS.

 

What key challenges do distributors face today? Distributors and National Accounts are data driven businesses, but they operate in an environment that has not fully digitally transformed. They take in massive amounts of data that must be processed, analyzed and acted upon, but in many cases the workflows still involve a great many manual steps. Paper apps are still being mailed to their offices. They have to be manually entered, then sent on for processing and approval. Tasks arising from the new business intake process (like follow-ups on paramedical issues) are not automated. In many cases commission payments, claims resolution and customer service are still not as fast, seamless and user-friendly as they could be. Related to those data issues, all distributors and national accounts are seeking to attract and retain more advisors. With the advent of new distribution models, such as robo-advisors, the distributors role in policy fulfillment is lessening, decreasing the advisors’ need for that part of the traditional distributor value proposition. Instead, distributors must find new ways to add value to advisor businesses as part of an emerging new value proposition that serves the digitally transformed insurance landscape. In the new world, advisors place more value on partnerships with those organizations that can help them grow their business.

 

How are Application Processes Automated? Distributors and national accounts need to be able to process new business from advisors on a daily basis. Our advanced case management workflow speeds up the underwriting process for distributors. Equisoft/Centralize allows them to enter policy applications either manually or through a feed from the carriers. They can send those policies through to the carrier and get them approved and in- force—giving distributors the ability to push the process from beginning to end. In a nutshell, distributors who use Equisoft/Centralize find there is less manual intervention needed from the distributors to see the policy through to in-force status. Our automations and case management workflow are unparalleled, ensuring our distributors’ clients can confidently and accurately process cases all the while providing excellent service to their clients—the advisors.

 

How is the platform improving back-office efficiencies? The ease-of-use of Equisoft/Centralize is a huge benefit for distributors. Many distributors, even today, are still getting paper applications—advisors are actually mailing them in. Then the distributor has to manually enter them. Equisoft/Centralize greatly automates this process, which creates efficiencies for distributors and makes for a better advisor experience. How does Equisoft contribute to the digital transformation of the independent insurance channel? Equisoft/Centralize is a very modern, rules-based solution. It is also central to the emerging digital value proposition for distributors—enabling distributors to better partner with advisors in the success of their practice. It identifies opportunities for advisors, removes obstacles in the processing of new business, and makes sure they get paid faster. In total, it helps all industry stakeholders achieve the end goal—making their clients’ financial goals a reality.

 

How COVID-19 Forced the BGA World into e-Engagement
We are now one year past the start of COVID-19 lockdown. Our world was turned upside down as we all faced a global pandemic. Many struggled to find the right process flow and adapt to new ways of doing business. Even carriers were pushed into a “forced pilot” of e-Engagement to insure they could get underwriting information, signature requirements and policies to the customer. The changes were swift and mandatory to support the ultimate customer, the applicant/insured and their beneficiaries. With this, agencies looked to process experts whether internal in their organization or others to help with the transition. Per Stacey Paulson, director of insurance services at eNoah iSolutions, “The beauty of the BGA space is each agency has their unique culture as to what works best for them and their customer base. This serves the greater good in meeting the needs of different customers in protecting their families. The struggle was real when some were forced into an electronic application process and not having the internal resources—all while moving to a work from home environment. I’m glad we were there to help our customers through this difficult time.”

 

While it’s hard to think of much positive to come out of COVID-19, the forced adoption of e-Engagement opened mindsets of how to do business moving forward. It took away some of the fear and challenged us to think of different ways to engage with our peers and current and future customers.

 

Equisoft’s Accelerate Series provides life insurance and investment executives with the means to innovate and grow

Bringing together the largest pool of top industry leaders, experts, analysts and association executives, Equisoft’s webinar series delivers your roadmaps for digital growth!

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Philadelphia, PA, March 22 2021 – Equisoft, a leading global digital solutions provider to the financial industry, announced today the return of its acclaimed Accelerate Series of virtual thought leadership sessions. This year’s series is focused on Accelerating Innovation to Fuel Continuous Growth. Eighteen webinars will be hosted around the globe, providing insurance and investment decision-makers with actionable insights and strategies to help them turn the market narrative to their advantage.

 

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The first round of live sessions, starting March 31, will kick start the year-long series. Each month we’ll be addressing the specific needs and biggest challenges of insurance carriers, distributors, investment product manufacturers, broker-dealers and wholesalers. Equisoft’s Accelerate Series features over 50 leading industry experts, analysts, insiders and clients discussing winning strategies from companies capitalizing on growth opportunities through digital transformation. “Digital transformation is foundational to an industry responding to the concurrent impact of the pandemic, changes in customer preferences and the impact of demographic shifts which directly impact both distribution partners and consumers. Carriers are looking to drive efficiencies across the entire value chain, accelerating efforts to innovate and integrate in support of new business and post-issue servicing capabilities. Competitive positioning also is important, as transparency around cycle times and ease of doing business helps reframe relationships across the insurance ecosystem. Activities that bring strategic, tactical and operational imperatives into results-oriented focus, are therefore essential,’’ said Rob McIsaac, Executive Vice President, Research & Consulting, Novarica, one of the series’ featured speakers.

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As life insurance and investment companies are emerging from the pandemic, they’re looking for unique ways to position themselves ahead of the curve. Equisoft’s Accelerate Series bolsters the industry’s innovation and growth by leveraging research, thought leadership and success stories into actionable plans. Sessions in Q1 & Q2 will tackle Addressing Changing Market Conditions, Digital Client Engagement through the Insurance Value Chain, and How Insurers are Leveraging Data. With more to come for Q3 & Q4 including agency automation, increasing wholesaler value, data migration, IFRS 17, and more.

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Leading industry experts, executives and analysts that will be sharing their insights during the sessions include Dan McCoach, Marty Ellingsworth,Juan Mazzini (Celent), Kartik Sakthivel (LIMRA/LOMA), and many more. Along with Equisoft’s experts and industry stakeholders, they will share their experience, expertise and insights into how organizations can adapt to the evolving industry landscape, jumpstart growth in a low-interest-rate environment, or shed the legacy technical burden to realize the full potential of modern digital solutions.

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Dedicated sessions will provide exclusive research, complete with commentary detailing what players in the insurance and investment industry are doing to conquer today’s issues. The series’ launch on March 31 will be Addressing Changing Market Conditions: Carrier Solutions for Rapid Product Adaptation, where experts Rob McIsaac, from Novarica, and Equisoft’s Chief Product Officer Olivier Lafontaine will be analyzing how the Life Insurance industry can best face today’s challenges. Equisoft’s Accelerate Series is presented in collaboration with several industry partners such as Celent, Novarica, LIMRA, LOMA, KPMG, Clearview, The National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies (NAILBA), The Insurance Association of the Caribbean (IAC), The Organisation of Eastern & Southern Africa Insurers (OESAI), The Insurance Institute of South Africa (IISA) and many others.

Webinar registration:
To register or learn more about Equisoft’s complimentary webinars, please visit: Equisoft.com/Accelerate
Media resource: Jean-François Parent, PR & Communications Manager, Equisoft Jean-Francois.Parent@Equisoft.com, +1 514-608-1236
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About Equisoft

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Founded in 1994, Equisoft is a global provider of advanced insurance and investment digital solutions. Recognized as a valued partner by over 75 of the world’s leading financial institutions in 15 countries, Equisoft offers innovative front-end applications, extensive back-office services and unique data migration expertise. The firm’s flagship products include a SaaS policy administration solution, CRM, financial needs analysis, financial planning, asset allocation, fund and portfolio analysis, quotes and illustrations, electronic application, agency management systems, as well as customer, agent and broker portals. Equisoft is also Oracle’s largest and most experienced partner for the OIPA platform. With its business-driven approach, deep industry knowledge, innovative technology, and some 500 experts based in the USA, Canada, Chile, Colombia, South Africa, India and Australia, Equisoft helps its clients tackle any challenge in this era of digital disruption.

Celent research ranks Equisoft’s illustration software among the best solutions in North America

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Equisoft’s insurance illustration software is acknowledged by Celent for its advanced technology and breadth of functionality, and for providing “the best experience across all illustration systems”.

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Philadelphia, January 14, 2021 – Equisoft, a leading global provider of digital business solutions for the insurance and wealth industries, proudly announced that its insurance quote and illustration software, Equisoft/illustrate, has been recognized by Celent as one of the top-rated solutions in North America.

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Research and consulting firm Celent analyzed 10 vendor-offered illustration systems available for life, health and annuities product carriers. The findings were published in Celent’s recent report: “Life Insurance Illustration Systems: North American Edition.”

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“A life illustration system is a core piece of the sales process in life insurance,” wrote Celent’s Senior Analyst Karen Monks in the report. “Based on solid overall functionality and recent improvements that we’ve seen, we think that vendor-offered illustration systems can improve a producer’s efficiency at the point of sale and, for the investment, will also deliver significant long-term savings for the insurer.”

.Going beyond table stakes quotes and illustrations

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As highlighted by the report, illustration tools are table stakes for life insurance carriers. Every company has a solution, whether developed in-house or sourced from a vendor, that does the required job -showing potential clients the details of what they are thinking of purchasing.

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“Today’s insurers are looking to gain a competitive edge on any front, whether it’s speed-to-market, offering seamless experiences or product innovation. More and more see an opportunity to elevate illustrations from a cost-of-doing-business tool to a critical platform for promoting insurance products,” said Bruno Leduc, Senior Director, Digital Insurance Solutions at Equisoft. “They want a user-friendly and effective tool that will outdo what their competitors could offer.”

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“Based on customer feedback and Celent’s review of the product, Equisoft/illustrate should be on an insurer’s short list when considering a new illustration system,”​ concluded Karen Monks in the report. “It provides the best experience we saw across all illustration systems this year.”

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Equisoft/illustrate is a class-leading front-end solution for comparing compliant quotes and generating the most compelling illustrations to showcase insurance products. Used by top-tier companies in North America, this next-generation software is a strategic asset for insurers seeking to unlock the full potential of their growth strategy and be at the forefront of the market.

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About Equisoft

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Founded in 1994, Equisoft is a global provider of advanced insurance and wealth digital solutions. Recognized as a valued partner by over 75 of the world’s leading financial institutions in 15 countries, Equisoft offers innovative front-end applications, extensive back-office services and unique data migration expertise. The firm’s flagship products include a SaaS policy administration solution, CRM, financial needs analysis, financial planning, asset allocation, fund and portfolio analysis, quotes and illustrations, electronic application, agency management systems, as well as customer, agent and broker portals. Equisoft is also Oracle’s largest and most experienced integration partner for the OIPA platform. With its business-driven approach, deep industry knowledge, innovative technology, and some 500 experts based in the USA, Canada, Chile, Colombia, South Africa, India and Australia, Equisoft helps its clients tackle any challenge in this era of digital disruption.

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Bruno Leduc

Senior Director, Digital Insurance Solutions

Bruno has over 15 years of experience in life insurance technology. He’s an expert in digital transformation, front end implementations, and user experience.

Life Insurance Technology In 2020 Was Driven By Simplicity And Data

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By Ken Leibow

Published in Broker World Magazine January 1, 2021

 

We all had to adapt to change beginning nine months ago with the pandemic. A distributor’s Agency Management System (AMS) must improve its quality of service for agents/advisors, field underwriting (exams) needs to be safe, and turning Inforce data to action is critical for advisors to manage their client’s policies. Here is an inside look on how life insurance solution providers adapted and innovated to these new challenges in 2020.

 

 

Agency Management Systems Essential for Distributors during COVID

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Life insurance distributors in the USA and Canada faced the same challenges during COVID in 2020. I reached out to Equisoft whose Agency Management System (AMS) is the most widely used in Canada for life insurance distributors, and it is also available in the USA. I also met with OneHQ whose modern, easy-to-use CRM/AMS gained momentum in 2020.

 

David Nicolai, vice president, Insurance Solutions at Equisoft explains how back office automation is essential for servicing their advisors, “How do distributors stay relevant in times of accelerated change? That’s a critical question we’ve heard distributors ask so often over the past nine months. The answer, for some, is that it has been difficult—to pivot quickly and execute on a new value proposition that will enhance their ability to attract and retain the best advisors—if they are still running their business with manual, largely paper-based processes. There’s too much drag in the system. Innovation, no matter how creative their thinking is, will be hard to implement. On the other hand, we have clients who went from 100 percent paper-based to almost entirely automated and digital when they implemented the Equisoft/centralize agency management system. That made all the difference. When COVID hit and distributor staff, advisors and clients could no longer meet in person, their transition to the new reality was almost seamless. App processing, advisor communication, inforce services—all continued at pace because they didn’t rely on paper and mail. Clients received the support they needed in difficult times. Advisors appreciated the service and value their distributors were able to provide in helping them continue to meet their clients’ needs.”

 

Meeting with Brett Barker, Senior Account Executive at OneHQ, he provided not only information about their AMS, but client experiences during 2020. Tailored specifically for insurance distribution, OneHQ is an extremely powerful yet easy-to-use system. It’s highly configurable, replacing disjointed systems by bringing the CRM, AMS, and Compensation together plus integrating all other systems into one place. Brett explained, “Our user-friendly interface and personalized modules help give each department a dialed-in system to maximize results. As an example, a OneHQ customer recently made the move from their legacy system to OneHQ because their back office and sales teams had very little communication between systems. Wanting more data visibility for sales and back office efficiencies, the team moved to OneHQ and for the first time in years they had access to all of the information they needed within seconds. In the end, sales activity increased 20 percent and OneHQ’s innovative platform is providing better service to agents by freeing up the back office teams from running reports and answering questions.”

 

With the changes brought about by COVID-19 and more focus on how technology can impact sales internally and for their agents, OneHQ has witnessed a tidal wave of new clients. Their modern technology that focuses on increasing sales without sacrificing service is giving their clients an edge during these rapidly changing times. Brett continued, stating that OneHQ is increasingly seeing more of their clients beginning to offer their agents a full technology strategy starting with the CRM that integrates with their back-office system. In addition, this also makes the IMO much “stickier” with their agents. To sum it all up, Kyle J. Ginavan, CEO, OneHQ, said, “There have always been many good technology options available to insurance agents, but never a full technology strategy. While the securities industry has well-thought-out technology strategies for financial advisors, insurance distribution has typically lagged in this area. However, with COVID, we’re certainly starting to see that change.”

 

 

Exam Safety: Simplifying through Innovation

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Underwriting is key to the life insurance new business process. For term insurance, a drop ticket with an exam still dominates the higher percentage of cases in 2020. Paramed exam companies are the front lines for underwriting. I reached out to Ryan Janeway, founder and CEO of MediPro Direct. Ryan explained that at this stage of the pandemic, protecting field medical teams and applicants requires access, innovation, and adaptation. Said Janeway, “Very few companies are positioned as effectively as MediPro Direct to actually improve customer experience during this crisis. MediPro Direct founded Vanguard Genetics LLC in 2015 to gain access to clinical and genetic testing services that can aid underwriters in policy-making decisions now and into the future. Under the current circumstances, our clinical lab association has provided immediate access to necessary PPE, as well as rapid COVID antigen testing to ensure the safety of our customers and team.”

 

As innovators, the teams at MediPro Direct and Vanguard Genetics helped bring rapid antigen testing to market and are now validating saliva test collection methods to simplify the collection process for these tests. Additionally, their teams have reduced manufacturing costs by up to 70 percent in order to dramatically improve public access to testing—which, combined with the distribution of vaccines, are key to getting customer business and lives back on track. Under proper credentialing, these tests can be used in the office and in the field to help ensure safety during insurance exams, clinical trials, and other medical interactions. MediPro Direct has adapted to the current environment by creating unique tools and processes such as its Tier1 Network™, to increase examiner coverage for carriers, its Quality First™ system to dramatically improve access to real-time quality data for carriers, and its RemoteID™ system for scaling and improving tele-interview processes without the need for fixed call centers.

 

 

Inforce Policy Data Turns to Action

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As the digitization of the life insurance industry persists, the concept of shared visibility of data is becoming more relevant. Shared visibility of information across distribution partners helps to keep carriers, BGAs, and advisors all aligned on what’s working as it should and what areas have room for improvement. When it comes to inforce policy management specifically, that shared visibility is especially important. But timely exchange of information is not enough to satisfy a proactive, compliant, and efficient inforce management strategy.

 

Visibility of inforce data alone is table-stakes. As you continue to seek ways to not only differentiate but also provide more value to your distribution partners, you need a way to make that data and information you share with each other actionable. That’s where a platform like Proformex comes in as the right partner for you and your community. Proformex connects visibility to efficiency, simplicity, and opportunity. By aggregating data and giving everyone access to it—their platform takes that data and provides you with powerful analytics and insights that you and your distribution partners can use to make data-driven decisions that produce real-world outcomes. And there’s no manual burden involved; by automatically surfacing both risks and opportunities to you and your distribution partners, you’ll now have the ability to proactively manage potential problems and seize revenue-generating opportunities. It’s a win for everyone, from carrier to client.

 

Simplifying the life insurance new business experience impacts agents, distributors, carriers and consumers. Mining and analyzing life inforce data and turning it into action creates new sales opportunities for advisors to engage with their clients. COVID obviously accelerated innovation in life insurance technology in 2020. For those solution providers that have adapted and taken on the challenges head on with new innovations, they will have staying power in our industry moving forward in 2021.