Foresters is done with Voice Sig

[rousemark]

Good point. I also believe they need to do due diligence before hopping into bed with certain IMOs as well. I'd bet Foresters reevaluates things and will have their product available to select groups within a year or so

As long as companies allow agents that contract with them to contract with their competitors, they will have to deal with agents using them just to .place less favorable niche cases and not gt the good cases to balance it out. That was one advantage the old debit companies had.. Their agents were captive and the companies enforced the captivity.therefore they got good healthy business to balance out the not so healthy. LH pretty much has it that way today..

 

[theinsuranceman]

As long as companies allow agents that contract with them to contract with their competitors, they will have to deal with agents using them just to .place less favorable niche cases and not gt the good cases to balance it out. That was one advantage the old debit companies had.. Their agents were captive and the companies enforced the captivity.therefore they got good healthy business to balance out the not so healthy. LH pretty much has it that way today..

This will be the FE business model that FE carriers will be using in 5 years.

 

[NSRH]

For example.....

There are the carriers that have captive teams along with Indy distribution, but I was referring to something else that the selling agent hasn't felt yet. Many carriers are aggressively looking for real partners in the industry by creating specific products for groups, and granting exclusivity to specific products (or processes) to create a more intimate relationship.

Most writing agents haven't felt this yet, but it's coming.

The days of writing adverse business with one carrier are numbered, carriers are losing badly in that scenario.

 

[NSRH]

Disagree. Many companies we speak and work with love the independent channel and are shortly going to allow sales thru phone, email etc..

I think problems come from certain IMOs who tell their agents to only write certain business or health issues with particular carrier.

Companies are smart and catch on quick to these types of IMOs

The smaller carriers (who don't know any better) love the Indy model. They are quickly trying to scale, and believe they've found a solution.

Almost every IMO does not manage their agents. They are not proactive in looking for inconsistencies, and in the Telesales world, most IMOs don't audit for compliance.

Unless you have major oversight on a distribution these issues will always be there.

 

[NSRH]

Good point. I also believe they need to do due diligence before hopping into bed with certain IMOs as well. I'd bet Foresters reevaluates things and will have their product available to select groups within a year or so

They Absolutely will.

 

[shonceman]

This will be the FE business model that FE carriers will be using in 5 years.

I'm looking in from the outside, but one thing I'll give Senior Life on this topic is the effectiveness of their "captive/not captive" model. Agents are free to write other carriers when the need arises, but they seem to have systems in place to assure that most of the business gets placed with them. (At least that's the way I understood it from talking with you.)

 

[shonceman]

As long as companies allow agents that contract with them to contract with their competitors, they will have to deal with agents using them just to .place less favorable niche cases and not gt the good cases to balance it out. That was one advantage the old debit companies had.. Their agents were captive and the companies enforced the captivity.therefore they got good healthy business to balance out the not so healthy. LH pretty much has it that way today..

Settlers attempted to limit adverse selection by limiting how much of the Bronze product you could write. Unfortunately they seemed to miss that they had a big problem with adverse selection in the Silver. They were taking all the fatties and crazies, but until recently were turning away otherwise healthy diabetics due to insulin use.

 

[rousemark]

Settlers attempted to limit adverse selection by limiting how much of the Bronze product you could write. Unfortunately they seemed to miss that they had a big problem with adverse selection in the Silver. They were taking all the fatties and crazies, but until recently were turning away otherwise healthy diabetics due to insulin use.

Yeah.. and the Bronze with its pricing and commission structure should have been profitable on its own based upon what other companies claim about similar products.

 

[suranceman]

The broker model isn't going away. It's been around for a very long time. It wouldn't be here still unless carriers were making money doing it.

The FE business isn't going to a captive model.

Furthermore, do you really think their actuaries are so naive that they don't expect to get independent agents taking advantage of niche underwriting?

Companies like SL, LH, or northstar only say captive is coming because they'd rather not deal with the competition of independent agencies. They know they have an inferior offering to the marketplace with their captive model.

 

[VolAgent]

Yeah.. and the Bronze with its pricing and commission structure should have been profitable on its own based upon what other companies claim about similar products.

Wasn't it you saying that Bronze was actually quite profitable for Settlers, but their actuary refused to listen?