How the Life and Annuity Product Gameboard Looks Now
But life insurers seem happy with how new, streamlined underwriting programs are working, and many companies are still working to speed up applicant risk assessment, as well as other processes.
Policygenius has joined with Foresters Financial to introduce the Foresters Your Term policy, a policy that can offer a 24-hour online underwriting process, for a solid term life policy, for many applicants.
The policy can provide terms of 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 years, and coverage amounts ranging from $100,000 to $1 million.
Meanwhile, life insurers are also continuing to try to accelerate internal processes.
BetterLife, for example, has picked iPipeline to upgrade all of its technology systems, both for agent-led transactions and consumer self-insurance-based transactions.
4. Death has the consumer’s attention.
COVID-19 put consumers on notice that crowdfunding websites are often a poor, unreliable mechanism for paying for funerals and other end-of-life expenses.
Western and Southern Life Insurance Co. has responded to consumers’ interest in end-of-life products by adding the Easy Choice Life policy.
Consumers can buy the simplified-issue whole life policy without going through a medical exam or having blood tests.
The policy can pay up to $49,999 in death benefits.
Premiums are payable for 20 years, or to age 100, depending on the payment option chosen.
5. All that shaking is getting annoying.
Insurers are adding some product features specifically to respond to consumers’ concerns about investment market volatility.
Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America is scratching the volatility relief itch by introducing the Multi-Year point-to-point crediting method for non-variable indexed annuities.
Allocation options based on the method can offer participation rates that are designed to begin higher and increase gradually throughout the multi-year term, according to Allianz Life.
The method comes with an Allianz Life Index Lock feature that can increase consumers’ ability to address volatility, by letting them lock in an index value once per crediting period, the company says.
6. Some people could still live a long time.
COVID-19 has shortened average life expectancy for some consumers, but not for all.
Pacific Life is appealing to retirement savers who could live a long time by working with Wespath Benefits and WTW to provide a qualifying longevity annuity contract, or QLAC, option in Wespath’s enhanced LifeStage Retirement Income program.
The program can provide a retirement income stream that starts at age 80 and insures the client against the risk of outliving savings.
The feature can also protect a spouse against the risk of outliving savings.
Pacific Life notes that the QLAC has another virtue: It can reduce the dreaded required minimum distributions, or RMDs.
(Photo: Emilia Mariana Ungur/Shutterstock)
