How Bestow Helped a Top-10 Carrier Grow Final Expense Sales 200% Year-Over-Year

When a major carrier approached Bestow about transforming their final expense business, they expected efficiencies and a modest increase in policy sales. What happened within the first year exceeded all expectations. By replacing fragmented systems with a unified intelligent platform, bound policies increased a whopping 200%. 

The secret wasn’t just going digital, of course; it was delivering an end-to-end experience so fast and frictionless that agents actually wanted to use it. In an industry where new technology typically faces adoption resistance, 61% of agents at one distributor sold through Bestow’s platform within three months, with 76% returning to sell more. 

The Challenge: Digital Transformation That Agents Will Actually Use 

The carrier wanted to capture more market share but faced a common problem: for agents, time is money, and most digital tools require training, create friction, or introduce delays that kill momentum. 

They needed to go from paper applications often taking days or weeks to instant, 100% online decisions without sacrificing underwriting quality. They also needed distribution technology that agents would embrace, not simply be forced to tolerate. Oh, and the market for final expense was only growing. The longer they waited, the more market share competitors could capture. 

Previous attempts with disconnected point solutions hadn’t resulted in the desired efficiencies, cost savings, or adoption rates. Quote engines didn’t talk to eApps. Underwriting decisions required manual handoffs. Enter Bestow. 

The Bestow Solution: Intelligence-First, End-to-End Infrastructure 

Rather than stitch together multiple vendors, the carrier partnered with Bestow, a cloud-native, digital first platform that extends to policy administration. 

Bestow’s development process was agent-obsessed. Weekly demos with field agents and stakeholders identified friction points before they became blockers. The question at every stage: what makes this faster and easier for agents to sell? 

To achieve 100% instant decision rate, Bestow’s underwriting engine delivered a sophisticated risk assessment in under two minutes, with no applications sent to manual review. This all-digital approach meant agents could close sales on the spot. 

Bestow’s broader underwriting capabilities extend well beyond instant decisions. The platform features multipath underwriting that dynamically routes applications based on risk appetite, with complex cases flowing to human underwriters. Bestow’s strategy varies across partners and products, like IUL and term. But for this particular product and market segment, instant decisions for 100% of applicants delivered customers and agents eager to gain coverage. 

Seven months later, the product launched with capabilities competitors often take years to build: 

• 11-minute median application time (start to submit), compared to hours or days with paper 

• 100% instant underwriting decisions in under two minutes

 • Zero phone interviews or follow-up questions. Everything completed on the spot 

• Intuitive UX that new agents could learn in one or two tries

Self-built solutions can take 18 months or more. With Bestow’s cloud-native platform, the carrier tapped into pre-configured products, deeply integrated data sources, and provider connections to seize a market opportunity in record time.

The Results: Adoption and Growth at Scale

Within three months: 61% of agents at one major distributor had sold a policy through Bestow’s platform. 76% came back to sell more, unheard-of retention for new insurance technology. The business impact: 200% YoY growth.

The carrier launched in under a year, instead of the typical 18-24 months. They could see real-time data on what was converting and where distribution was expanding. When they wanted to iterate or launch adjacent products, Bestow’s infrastructure was already built to handle changes easily, often in just a few days. The alternative (building in-house or integrating 5-8 point solutions) would have taken years longer and cost multiples more. 

Why Bestow’s Approach Is Winning With Major Carriers 

With a successful final expense product in the market, supported by Bestow’s technology, the carrier’s in-house teams were free to maintain and improve existing systems, focus underwriting talent on complicated product applications, and plan for more ambitious future product development into emerging markets.

Top carriers are increasingly choosing Bestow’s unified SaaS platform over the patchwork approach. What gives Bestow an edge? The company originally built its platform for direct-to-consumer insurance, learning firsthand what actually converts and what creates friction, eventually recognizing their technology had the power to transform the entire industry.

The result: consumer-grade experiences that agents actually want to use, intelligent underwriting that adapts to each carrier’s strategy, and speed to market that point solutions simply can’t match. 

Find out more!

Download Bestow’s New Business whitepaper, which breaks down the need to unify the life insurance acquisition journey and how to solve for fragmented pipelines.