Getting Tactical: Changes Life Insurance Carriers Can Make to Respond to Disruption

Adriana Royal

How can life insurance carriers tackle innovation with no-code? We dive into specific use cases across distribution, operations, and customer retention.

In our previous blog posts, we talked about the competencies carriers must develop to compete effectively as well as how disruption in life insurance is manifesting along the insurance value chain. Now, we’re going to highlight some examples of how a few of our life insurance clients got tactical and honed in on the required competency areas (faster time-to-market, test-and-learn mentality, and adaptability) to better respond to disruption.

Distribution: Building a custom e-application for a term life product

The life insurance application process is rife with manual work, paper forms, and complexity. Most systems used today have limited-to-no upfront NIGO remediation functionality and are rather inflexible. Many of these applications cannot support streamlined experiences because they are not API-centric and UX customization is very time consuming.

Wanting to move the needle on customer experience and agent efficiency, a large US-based life insurance carrier approached us to help them launch a new application that would help them realize straight-through processing for their term life product. In their current state, the application process was rife with back-and-forth communication, inconsistent data capture, manual processes, and a lack of transparency for all parties involved.

Wanting to move the needle on customer experience and agent efficiency, a large US-based life insurance carrier approached us to help them launch a new application that would help them realize straight-through processing for their term life product.

Using Unqork’s no-code platform, they built a term life application in just 12 weeks that enabled the following:

End-to-end digital workflow with persona specific interfaces for advisors, customers, & operations associates
Automated NIGO validation and remediation
Integrations to internal applications (policy admin system, illustration engine), external databases (LexisNexis), & customer tracking tools to support straight-through processing and fulfillment
Friction-free handoffs

Now, they reap the following benefits:

Reduced costs by 30%
Decreased turnaround time from 60+ days to <20 days
Significantly reduced NIGO from 65%+ to <25%

New Business Operations: Accelerating the fulfillment process with rules-centric solutions

Within life underwriting, gathering the requisite information to provide a decision on a life application can be very time consuming and a major pain point for customers. While carriers are striving to decrease the response time and degree of invasiveness, this is easier said than done.

Click here to learn how Principal used Unqork’s platform to strategically digitize at scale.

Carriers are seeking to invest in the models and learnings that will support accelerating their decision time for increasingly complex risks. That said, they also need rules-centric solutions that can support personalized questionnaires, team collaboration, evidence management, and more.

One of our customers wanted to drive efficiencies in their underwriting journey for customers, agents, and underwriters. With Unqork, they were able to deliver a series of solutions to make it easier for customers to respond to the health questionnaire and tools for internal staff to oversee and troubleshoot the process. With an application they built in 8 weeks, they were able to realize:

Decreased time-to-fulfillment by 80%
Reduced processing time by 78%
Mitigated operational risk with automated controls & data validation rules
Improved customer experience

This fully digitized workflow was able to accelerate the underwriting experience thanks to:

Optimized paths of 2,500 reflexive questions
An omni-channel digital application incorporating UW rules, servicing, and statusing
Tools for support staff to manage cases and submissions, with real-time analytics to measure consumer behavior

Retention & customer experience: Enabling customer self-service through portals

Insurance customers expect a seamless, digital servicing experience, yet self-service options are often rudimentary and customers must escalate to costly and time-consuming support centers.

One of our life insurance customers was faced with a conundrum in their post-sales processes, needing to marry increased cost efficiency with growth and a superior customer experience. Manual and time-intensive servicing processes were hurting their bottom line and they sought a customer self-service portal, but they didn’t have the development resources to build a production-ready application from scratch. So, they leaned on Unqork’s platform to get it done.

Within 10 weeks, they built a customized modular portal that supported a series of self-service activities. They were able to accomplish:

Lowered servicing costs by 60%
Shortened processing time by 80%
Moved majority of client servicing to self-service
Reduced dependency on vendors to build future improvements, as non-technical users contributed to the overall build

Looking to win new customers and attain current ones? The time is now to satisfy customer’s demand for more personalized and instant digital experiences. Request a demo today.