Graphics Tool Helps Advisors Make Better Pitch

A new, graphic-intensive illustration tool helps advisors integrate permanent life insurance scenarios into financial planning, all while protecting them from future fiduciary challenges.

The illustration software has been licensed to 39 broker general agencies that work with an estimated 25,000 to 100,000 agents and advisors, said William Shelow, president and CEO of LifeMark Partners, an independent marketing organization (IMO).

Developed by Assurance, an insurance industry vendor, the Ensight Proposal Visualization tool is designed to be intuitive to use for advisors.

“It's digital, it's graphic and it changes the whole presentation process and makes it a lot more interactive for client and advisor,” Shelow said. “It’s not just about the numbers.”

The days of cutting and pasting rows of numbers from one Excel spreadsheet to another and of sitting down at kitchen tables with static illustrations are disappearing as young advisors migrate to dynamic presentations.

In dynamic presentations, graphics change as a finger hovers over a glass surface on hardware like an iPad.

“I think it will definitely help with their sales,” Shelow said. “With the graphic aspect of it, it changes the presentation a lot.”

Simple to Use, Protects Advisors

Insurers feed their permanent life insurance product data into the widely used WinFlex platform and Ensight distills the data from the platform.

Values pertaining to as many as 20 insurance contracts appear, but agents typically compare the values from no more than four or five life insurance contracts at once, Shelow said. said.

Ensight Proposal Visualization helps agencies streamline back-office workflow and “create an intuitive digital sales experience to meet the growing consumer demand for simplicity,” said Bill Unrue, CEO of Assurance, in a news release.

As swaths of the financial services industry move toward a consultative and advisory approach, similar dynamic software tools for agents have appeared in the market, according to consulting reports.

A fiduciary approach to planning means more advisors are going to have to look out of the best interest of clients, and that means advisors will need to prove they provided clients with the best advice at the time, Shelow said.

Dynamic software tools retain those illustrations.

Advisors working in the best interest of clients will need to be objective and transparent, and will have to document their work, “so this tool is important,” Shelow said.

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Writer Cyril Tuohy has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. Cyril may be reached at [email protected].

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