Pssst….There is a Better Way for Life Insurers

By: Ruth Fisk, VP Insurance Marketing at Smart Communications

All too often, life insurers are slow to adopt new technologies – especially when compared to other segments within the insurance industry. The good news? Life insurers no longer need to accept inefficient, manual intensive, primarily paper-based processes as the standard.

Fortunately, we are starting to see leaders in the industry actively look for methods to enhance the customer experience and improve life insurance selling strategies. However, we understand that sometimes when you are in the thick of it, it is difficult to see the forest through the trees. In this blog, we will explore how best-of-breed technologies can be used to better the new business process and improve the turnaround time in insurance.

Life Insurers need to accelerate their “speed to coverage” by improving the end-to-end insurance sales cycle process. A focused effort in improving their life insurance selling strategies will enable Insurers to improve the customer experience and reduce Not in Good Order (NIGO) rates, while also increasing the productivity of the underwriting function. To start, Life Insurers should leverage low code digital platforms to deliver intelligent, adaptive interviews that are intuitive and easy to use. These solutions offer reflexive questioning that enforces business rules and helps to automate manual intensive processes to draft amendments and exclusions, streamline the placement of facultative reinsurance and reduce the effort required to prepare policy contracts packages.

Easier said than done? Not really. Technology is the easy part. Most often, it is the culture change within the organization that prohibits positive change. Below are three easy steps to implement across the new business life cycle that when incrementally adopted, can fundamentally change the way Life Insurers operate:

Acquisition: Leverage a low code digital platform to reduce friction in the submission process by providing adaptive, intelligent interviews that guide the buyer through relevant questioning across any preferred channel on any device.

Onboarding: Improve turnaround time in insurance by investing in a pure cloud, modern conversations platform to enable automated requests for underwriting reports, including labs, para-meds and Attending Physician Statements (APS) with digital adaptive interviews, data management and ACORD messaging. Utilize a low code digital platform to guide the underwriter through a streamlined process that improves the ability to complete facultative reinsurance shopping in a simplified, automated fashion. Leverage on-demand, interactive draft editing tools to create Amendments & Exclusions, easily integrating the use of regulatory and legal language as required by jurisdiction or product.

Policy Issuance: Enhance the creation of the tangible aspect of the Life Insurance new business process – the policy contract – with a modern customer communications management (CCM) solution. This eliminates the manual intensive process typical for collating the mandatory documents required to order and assemble for the policy contract package. Once compiled, orchestrating the digital delivery of the product to the customer’s preferred channel offers a true omnichannel experience.

Life Insurers have a significant opportunity to modernize their operations by adopting proven, digital-first technologies that will enable them to dynamically modernize their life insurance selling strategies and improve their insurance sales cycle process. Core to this transformation is the adoption of low code digital platforms that are purpose-built for the cloud and can be business owned and led. This ultimately reduces reliance on IT and positively impacts revenue by decreasing the turnaround time in insurance. Key to this strategy is the ability to introduce incremental change – allowing the business to evolve and adapt – while gaining value from the benefits delivered to all their constituents through means of increased revenue, higher retention rates and improved customer satisfaction.

By leveraging pure cloud solutions and taking advantage of true SaaS offerings, Life Insurers will uncover the ability for fast implementation – often in weeks versus months or years. Those who adopt these platforms will be early-to-market with new product offerings as well as be seen as leaders in the field.

Life Insurers are at an apex of change, and the time is ripe. There is an easier way to meet a new generation of customers by switching to digital-first interactions and managing the entire life cycle from new business submission to issuance.