How Carriers Use Technology to Transform the Buyer Experience (and grow their business in the process)

For many years, the process for consumers to buy life insurance has remained unchanged. 

The life insurance buying process (before)

A potential customer meets with a life insurance agent to discuss their situation and financial needs, in the event of an untimely death. 

The agent recommends the best life insurance product for their situation and presents an estimate for how much that policy will cost, based on factors like age, gender, and health. 

Next, the potential customer makes the decision to move forward and, with the help of their agent, they begin the application. 

Manually, the new customer adds as much health history into the application as they can recall, adding to an already lengthy and time-intensive process. 

Once the new customer has filled in all the required information, the agent sends the application to the carrier, and the carrier submits the application to the underwriting department. 

After that, the real wait begins.

The underwriting department sends for an APS.  

The APS takes weeks to come back.

The underwriting department sends a nurse out to the customer.  

An exam is done and fluids are taken which takes days to weeks to schedule, and, generally, weeks to complete.

After receiving their medical evidence, the underwriting team makes a decision and the policy is finally sent to the customer to officially purchase — after weeks of waiting.

But… what if the only hard part of buying life insurance was making the decision? 

What if all a consumer had to do to get a few quotes was submit a quick application and they could get a decision back within a day or two — without needing underwriting to order an APS or have anyone visit their home?

Carriers have looked at these questions over the years and wondered how getting medical data within a day could ever be possible, without sacrificing risk? At the same time, all carriers realize if they could achieve fast, easy access to health data — without sacrificing risk —  they could position themselves to capture more market share.

This is where many of our large, enterprise insurance clients are at the start of their journey. They need a way to improve customer experience by removing friction from the buying process — and obtain comprehensive medical records quickly and digitally for their customers. They simply aren’t sure where to begin.

Most carriers Human API work with also foresee a future of quick and painless buying for their customers and are diligently working towards that future. Unfortunately, the road to a customer-centric future is often paved with present-day challenges. For starters, it can be tough to identify the right technology partner to help guide the process while also providing support for ongoing operations, without introducing new risk.

Additionally, there seems to be no end to managing the revolving door of vendors, the frustration of manual work, incomplete data, slow evidence times, missing information and much more. Carriers are beginning to realize they need to partner with a team they can trust — who possess the same goal of helping their customers gain coverage, quickly and efficiently.

Helping enterprise insurance carriers as a trusted technology partner 

Enterprise carriers, like the ones experiencing the issues in this use case, need to know their technology partner can help them with all the challenges they are experiencing.

Human API helps each new carrier customer to achieve the highest hit rates in the industry and develop and accomplish ambitious technology, data, and underwriting goals.

Carriers that transfer the handling of all of their medical evidence to a technology vendor can see hit rates for their electronic medical records jump as high as 56%, with the average return time between 1-1.5 days. And when using an optimized APS reflex workflow, those customers with insufficient or unavailable electronic medical records, have APS records that are automatically ordered. This can bring the overall (EHR + APS) turnaround time for carriers using down to ~6 days. Much faster than the multi-week process  to which those same carriers had become accustomed.

Using health intelligence to  increase the availability and speed of access to digital health data has helped the carriers prioritize data and analytics in underwriting, and enabled them to roll out more efficient digital processes to sales and throughout the customer experience. 

These insurance carriers, that are adopting a technology first approach, are changing the landscape of the underwriting process, and it’s happening in ways that are impacting their overall business. Reducing the cycle time for obtaining a life insurance policy is attractive to customers. Slashing the time to wait for a policy to be issued means more customers make it to the finish line and buy policies.  This leads to new premium growth, each year.

When carriers hear about Human API, they are intrigued. Our team has built a proven technology and we strategically partner with carriers to help them implement and obtain expansive coverage of fast, efficient, and comprehensive electronic medical records, while transforming their buying experience and growing company profitability . Carriers meet with us, we align on a  plan, and we make it easy for them to future-proof their business .

The life insurance buying process after choosing the right technology partner

So, carriers make the decision to partner with a technology partner, moving them closer to their goals of transforming underwriting and improving the  consumer buying experience. In the process, they also remove uncertainty in how their business will achieve its goals while remaining ahead of old and new and technologically nimble players in the marketplace. 

So, what could the new customer experience look like  for buying life insurance?

• A potential customer meets with an agent to discuss their situation and financial needs in the event of their untimely death recommending the best life insurance product for their situation and providing a quote. 

• The individual makes a decision to move forward and, with their agent, they get started on the application and add their health info to the part 2.

• The agent sends the application to the carrier and it goes to the underwriting department. 

Then, the customer is almost done.

An electronic medical record is searched for and comes back within a day.

The underwriting team makes a decision and the policy is sent to the customer to officially purchase, just a few days after submitting their application.

And, now, one more family has peace of mind that they’re financially covered.