Nationwide More Than Halfway Through Life Insurance Transformation Process for Advisors, Clients

COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 19 -- Nationwide Mutual Insurance issued the following news release:

Nationwide, a leading insurance and financial services organization, is more than halfway through a significant multi-year investment designed to transform, enhance and simplify its life insurance business capabilities.

"We're in year three of a five-year journey to transform our life insurance business to a digital, real-time integrated experience that makes it simpler and more efficient for advisors and their clients," said Kirt Walker, president and chief operating officer of financial services, Nationwide. "For many, there is still the perception that purchasing life insurance is a time-consuming, intrusive and perhaps expensive process. The changes we've made and are making is a more customer-centric, efficient and digitized way of doing so."

Several of the new capabilities that are part of the transformation include:

Intelligent Underwriting - a streamlined approach introduced two years ago that can provide a faster and more efficient underwriting process. It requires fewer attending physician statements and is an accelerated process for some of the healthiest clients by eliminating medical exams. For advisors it means less time spent on application paperwork, including the need for the advisor to gather the clients' medical history. Walker said Intelligent Underwriting has led to approximately 50 percent of preferred risks being accelerated, meaning an offer was extended within a day or two and no labs were necessary. Also, these cases have had a 95 percent placement rate.

Pending Life Business Online Tracker - a real-time, mobile-friendly dashboard that allows advisors to check the status and information on their pending life insurance cases. There are no apps to download and no additional log-ins are required. It offers advisors quicker access to other tools, such as illustrations and e-applications, and allows them to sort, filter and organize cases by different criteria.

Digital Customer Interview - Later this year, the Digital Customer Interview will provide a personalized, digital option for the proposed insured to complete the medical portion of their life insurance application. The assessment is dynamically generated for each proposed insured based on available data. This will provide a third option for the proposed insured to answer medical questions in a way that works best for them: in-person, over the phone and online.

The assessment will eliminate the need to schedule a telephone interview or paramedical interview, saving time and allowing flexibility for the proposed insured to complete the assessment when it is most convenient for them.

The process is more efficient, convenient, secure and cost effective since it reduces life application unit costs.

"The manual, intrusive process for underwriting healthy individuals with ambiguous results is rapidly changing to a faster, automated, more consistent process using machine learning and predictive analytics," said Eric Henderson, senior vice president of Nationwide's annuity and life insurance businesses. "We want to make it a simpler, more streamlined and efficient experience for advisors and their clients through digitization."