By John Hilton
InsuranceNewsNet April 2, 2019
BALTIMORE -- Paul
Fedchak recalled a recent conversation with a life insurance professional who
said their carrier had the email addresses for just 20 percent of their
in-force block of customers.
Fedchak was stunned
by the revelation, he said during an afternoon session today at the 2019 Life
Insurance Conference.
"Every
business you engage with these days the first thing they ask for is an email
address," he said. "So we have a long ways to go."
Fedchak was joined
by Lauren Cross, assistant vice president at John Hancock Financial Services
for a session they called a "potpourri" of insurance trends.
One trend the
industry is falling short on is customer engagement. Hence, Fedchak's email
example. Insurers have a vested interest in keeping clients healthy, happy and
alive for as long as possible, Cross added. It makes sense to take better
advantage of engagement opportunities, she added.
That might mean
providing incentives for healthy behaviors, or leveraging technology to boost
engagement. Cross suggested insurers can make owning life insurance
"fun."
"We want to be
more than the people who send you a bill once a year," she said.
Accelerated Underwriting
Technology is an
obvious trend and the subject of several sessions. Accelerated underwriting is
moving ahead at a relatively quick pace, Cross said. Quick for the life
insurance industry, that is.
More importantly,
it is something the industry really needs to do, Cross said. After all, 48
percent of U.S. households are uninsured or under insured by $200,000 or more
total, LIMRA CEO David Levenson said.
"You can
organize the purchase of a house in about a week. Yet the life insurance policy
is still something ... that you're going to spend a month or two filling out
forms," Cross said.
"Frankly, we
have not changed that process very much since the late 80s, early 90s."
Many companies have
been "dabbling" in accelerated underwriting for the past two or three
years, she said. While the commitment is tentative to some degree, at least one
insurer is willing to use accelerated underwriting on policies up to $5
million, Cross said. Most of the quick approval underwriting is limited to
policies up to $1 million.
But the accelerated
underwriting trend is not quite to the make-or-break stage, however, she said.
"Is this
something that you have to have to be competitive, to be one of the life
insurance companies that is here for the long haul? I would say not yet,"
Cross said. "It's definitely something worth thinking about and spending
some time on. You don't want to be left behind."
InsuranceNewsNet
Senior Editor John Hilton has covered business and other beats in more than 20
years of daily journalism. John may be reached at john.hilton@innfeedback.com.
Follow him on Twitter @INNJohnH.
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