Insurance technology business integration provider Konnect Net has created an end-to- end hosted referral system solution for a major general insurance company. It is an example of the efficiency the company has already brought to the life insurance sector in New Zealand, and plans to bring to the Australian life insurance market in 2014.
“We got approached by a large general insurer that has separate business units for distribution of products to various financial services organisations,” said Konnect Net Australia’s general manager, Andrew Vasko.
“While they have got at the back end their policy-issue system, they didn’t have a mechanism to integrate, for example, with multiple banks or business bankers or mobile bankers to allow them to create referrals [and have them] sent to the insurer and have visibility of the progress of the referral.
“We’ve set up the insurer to allow them to create referrals for the bank, and for the operations team and underwriting team to update the status of the referral as it progresses. We’ve also built in specific service level agreements to follow up with those referrals, on the insurer’s side.”
All of the underwriters are registered within the platform, and when they log in they can view all referrals assigned to them. The referral can be tracked, by both the underwriter and the referrer, up to the point that a policy is issued.
“There are different scenarios,” Vasko said.
“They can use our solution to issue a policy, or they can still use their own to issue a policy and update the status of the referral, so the bank can see where the progress is.
“Each person on the bank side and the underwriter side gets an individual login while bank customers can lodge referrals online directly without a login. The business banker can then see referrals they (and their direct customers) create, and the progress; and underwriters can see referrals they have been assigned, and can update the progress.”
Vasko said that previously the referral and progress update system was either paper-based or non-existent.
“They sent paper forms, PDF forms, or they emailed them, so they turned up in an email inbox, they’re hard to follow up, easy to miss and hard to report,” he said.
The system generates reports on “how many got actioned within the first 24 hours, then 76 hours and 92 hours – how many referrals and what status. So there’s full visibility”.
Vasko said the nature of the insurance was “kind of irrelevant”, and the approach taken for general insurance could be mirrored in the risk area for life, income protection or trauma insurance (or both general and life insurance simultaneously).
Applications for life insurance can be sent to underwriters “where [advisers] don’t have access to online tools to perform online applications, and rely on paper or PDFs to be sent to insurers to follow up on life insurance requests”.
Applications can be sent to more than one underwriter, depending on which companies are sitting at the other end of the referral system, he said.
Vasko stressed that Konnect Net does not do product comparisons – there are other specialised tools already available, and knowing the market
is the adviser’s job anyway.
“What we’re trying to do is create a single efficient electronic hub to send those applications to insurers and ensure full transparency of the application process,” Vasko said.
“That is what we have done [with] the model we have proven in New Zealand.”
Read the article “The New Zealand solution”.
