E-apps and E-delivery are here now at last. AI will arrive later, but arrive it will. A future blog will address AI.
The insurance industry is not known for being on the cutting edge of technology–to put it mildly. And the individual disability insurance market, our small portion of this vast industry, tends to be even slower when it comes to technology. But change is arriving.
The big plus to the e-app is speed. E-apps allow for pre-filling of significant portions of an app; clients do not have to be in the room with you to sign; the e-app makes a quick pit-stop on our office for review (with most carriers); we then send it onto the respective home offices and we are committed to passing e-apps on within 2 hours of receiving them (during the business day). And since e-apps do not need to be printed out and entered manually into our CRM and into the database at the home office, everything moves faster.
Underwriting decisions are made faster; polices are issued faster, so coverage is in force sooner, the client is protected sooner and the agent receives her commission sooner.
Assurity and Illinois Mutual have been using electronic apps for sometime now. Principal is in the midst of rolling out their e-app right now. The Standard has one planned and for now is allowing agents to use Docusign (we have to set you up in advance if this interests you)–which has worked quite well It does not provide all the benefits of an e-app in terms of speeding up processing of apps, but it does simplify getting signatures long distance.
So far we have only seen big volume producers who do business long distance make much use of the e-app. But like the teleapp (which we love), we expect the e-app to be the norm in coming years.
E-delivery is also here now. The Standard has been delivering policies electronically for the last four years or so, and we also love this. It has shaved days or even weeks off of the process and has significantly improved placement rates. Principal has a similar system planned. In the past when a mistake was made in issuing a policy, we would have to mail it back and then wait a couple of weeks to get it reissued and mailed back to us. Now the fix takes a couple of hours usually.
E-app and E-delivery–sign up today.
