LIFE INSURANCE
TURNAROUND Technology's SHORTER TIMES AND IMPROVED Benefits APPLICANT EXPERIENCE
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lacing a life insurance policy is a great opportunity to validate your client’s confidence in doing business with you and to gain referral sources. It has become increasingly important to narrow the time between getting an application filed and actually placing the policy with the client. Delays can exert demands on your time and serve as distractions, particularly when you get calls from the underwriting department that wants to tie up the loose ends to finish the underwriting process. This lost time slows policy placement, detracts from client satisfaction, and limits your referral potential—the lifeblood of the insurance business. Ideally, the back-office operations of getting a policy underwritten and placed remain where they belong, in the background, and the underwriting process progresses quickly and without incident. Thankfully, technology has an expanding role in simplifying this process. During the past 20 years, there has been a remarkable transformation as we move toward a paperless world. Electronic-based underwriting has led many applications to be 90% complete in five days, rather than weeks. Gone are the days of completing applications on paper and faxing orders to the home office. Now, paramedical exams can be ordered with just a few clicks, and case status can be confirmed with the touch of a screen. Applicant signatures are collected over the phone at the time of the interview or electronically by email. Technological innovation has allowed us to simplify processes, reduce errors, and shorten the turnaround time from application to policy issuance. Technology has sped up how the results are collected and has improved 12 | CALIFORNIA BROKER
by JOHN REYNOLDS
the quality of specimen collection. Samples are processed within 24 hours and the results are sent to underwriters electronically. The data can be managed through different risk matrices that give insurers the capability to assign personalized risk scores to applicants. By using certain scheduling approaches, the paramedical exam process can be accelerated. Industry averages show that blind preset appointments for paramedical exams are canceled more than a quarter of the time and nearly 11% of examiner-scheduled appointments. By giving insurance applicants the ability to schedule their own paramedical appointments at the time of application, you allow them to set an appointment that fits into their busy schedule, thus minimizing delays. Being able to schedule exams and receive e-mail and phone reminders has reduced the process time of getting an exam from 11.5 days to just six in 2015. Testing service centers provide a professional, clinical setting for rapid collection of test results. It can give underwriters the data they need within days after blood and/or urine are acquired, vital signs are taken, and other information is collected. Test results can add or subtract from the applicant’s total underwriting picture, with better profiles earning better premium offers. Some tests can lead to understandably lower ratings for certain health concerns, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or poor liver function. Indeed, some applicants may be deemed uninsurable due to substance abuse, HIV, hepatitis, or other factors. These test results are becoming increasingly important to consumers as more and more people take control of their health. According to the 2016 In- CalBrokerMag.com -
surance Barometer study, 22% of consumers are using activity trackers to monitor their health. With a consumer’s growing desire to become more educated on their health, one of the biggest insights could come through access to laboratory results. This can be an enlightening experience, especially when applicants learn, for the first time, about latent chronic illnesses, such as high cholesterol, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. It is important to identify these health risks early with more than 86 million pre-diabetics in the United States (of which 8.1 million are undiagnosed). Some applicants are getting laboratory test results for the first time in years as a result of the life insurance application. Applicants can get their results online and even print them for that doctor visit they have been putting off (subject to carrier participation). The underwriting side of the equation is most important when it comes to protecting the insurance company’s interests. New tools are being introduced to measure risk accurately. The need to be thorough is always balanced with the need to satisfy clients; technology can play an important part in both. But, technology can never replace understanding your clients, learning what they need, and providing products that ensure their financial security through life’s many paths. H John Reynolds is vice president of Strategic Solutions at ExamOne. ExamOne is committed to ensuring that the underwriting requirement process is quick and convenient for applicants, agents, and home-office personnel. Additional services include data gathering, paramedical examinations, laboratory testing, and consultative analytics, designed to assist life insurance companies in fair, objective evaluations on the mortality risk of applicants. DECEMBER 2016