In September 2020, CLIEDIS held a roundtable with representatives from our distributor and carrier members to take a fresh look at the industry and the priorities of CLIEDIS in light of the changes COVID-19 has brought. We worked with companies following the roundtable to gather more information about the items that surfaced.

Much of the recent transformation supports the application process. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on digitization of post-sales service. Some of the key findings covered in these materials include.

• Carriers should support the 3 dominant eSignature tools used by advisors, not restrict to just 1 or 2.
• Companies have made great strides in accepting eSignatures for new business, but gap for digitizing inforce change forms needs to be filled.
• Solution providers need to work with distribution partners to make system improvements in order to improve efficiencies with available data.
• Issues regarding image style of capture, quality, size of files raised in session; opportunity to standardize or develop best practices on way data is captured.
• All carriers should offer capability to turn off paper inforce notifications when electronic option is offered. If option available, ensure distribution partners know how to do it.
• Changes to support electronic inforce notifications and documents happening with carriers taking different, inconsistent approaches. API infrastructure challenges may be blocking carriers from implementing a standard solution but this is unclear.  CLIEDIS will work with members to:
  • Understand API tech limitations and opportunities to close gap.
  • Define best practices for moving to paperless CONSISTENTLY in absence of an API solution.

And we’d like to end with this quote from one of our members. It resonated with many who participated in the sessions.

“I find it perplexing that insurance companies only want to invest in automation for new sales.  They should be equally concerned with automating the servicing aspects of the business already written.”

Slides available in the resource center.