Individual Life Policies

Heather Reetz · October 05, 2016, 02:14:23 PM

I saw a couple of old threads about this, but not sure I got what I was looking for...

Do you keep life insurance policies in Epic (or TAM for that matter)?

We have a fair amount of policies that expire 2029. I think that was the limit that TAM allowed. Now we are seeing these in our database and I don't know if we should keep them. When we converted from TAM to Epic, some things got purged, but now we are thinking that some further clean up might be in order.

Admittedly, I am least familiar with benefits policies in general so there may be plenty that I am unaware of. However, when I was browsing through those old threads, it looked like some people keep them on the books and some don't.

Anyone care to share your thought process of how life policies are handled as relates to your database?

DebAmstutz · October 05, 2016, 03:07:29 PM

We have them and I recently went through and extended the dates on the 2029 ones. We don't have a huge amount, but we are still receiving commission on them and because we transact and reconcile (TAM) I see these all the time on the companies' statements. They have all kinds of policy statuses, and one of these days I do want to do a cleanup and inactivate any that are no longer earning a commission.

Heather Reetz · October 05, 2016, 03:21:09 PM

Is there any reason to keep them if they are no longer earning commission?

Jim Jensen · October 05, 2016, 03:40:17 PM

Quote from: Heather Reetz on October 05, 2016, 03:21:09 PM
Is there any reason to keep them if they are no longer earning commission?

If you only care about collecting and not servicing policies, then no. If you'd like to be able to locate the policy if they call to file a death claim or call about other insurance, or consider contacting them for cross-sales or possibly re-writing the policy as needs change, then yes, I would keep it on the system. Sorry if I might sound a little sarcastic, but you're getting the agency principal response.

Heather Reetz · October 05, 2016, 03:59:25 PM

Quote from: Jim Jensen on October 05, 2016, 03:40:17 PM
Quote from: Heather Reetz on October 05, 2016, 03:21:09 PM
Is there any reason to keep them if they are no longer earning commission?

If you only care about collecting and not servicing policies, then no. If you'd like to be able to locate the policy if they call to file a death claim or call about other insurance, or consider contacting them for cross-sales or possibly re-writing the policy as needs change, then yes, I would keep it on the system. Sorry if I might sound a little sarcastic, but you're getting the agency principal response.

I welcome any and all education on the topic.

I understand your points. One thing that is probably not so typical is that these are old policies. We really don't write them anymore. We don't have a personal lines book any longer.

I guess I need to find out how often we need to service these policies. If the customer is contacting the company directly, it seems like we may not know if it's even still active if we are not receiving commissions any longer.

Jim Jensen · October 06, 2016, 09:12:33 AM

A common issue that comes up is that life policies are often held a long time and the insurance companies change names, get bought, merge or otherwise become someone else and the clients can't locate them, especially policies that are paid up and don't require additional payments. They then may come back to you to find them. You also may have contractural requirements to retain the applications and additional information for as long as the policy is in force, plus x years.

Coral · October 06, 2016, 09:54:12 AM

We have never done individual life. But, we did buy an agency that did them. We took all the information out of TAM and created a "life" folder on a data drive. All of the information is in there should we need to access it. It's open to selected people. We have no idea if any of the policies are still in effect as we do not check on them. I think the folder is 17 years old now.

Heather Reetz · October 19, 2016, 09:42:50 AM

Quote from: Jim Jensen on October 06, 2016, 09:12:33 AM
A common issue that comes up is that life policies are often held a long time and the insurance companies change names, get bought, merge or otherwise become someone else and the clients can't locate them, especially policies that are paid up and don't require additional payments. They then may come back to you to find them. You also may have contractural requirements to retain the applications and additional information for as long as the policy is in force, plus x years.

It sounds like we need to do some research to find out if we have any contractual reasons to keep the info.

Quote from: Coral on October 06, 2016, 09:54:12 AM
We have never done individual life. But, we did buy an agency that did them. We took all the information out of TAM and created a "life" folder on a data drive. All of the information is in there should we need to access it. It's open to selected people. We have no idea if any of the policies are still in effect as we do not check on them. I think the folder is 17 years old now.

While we would like to keep everything in Epic, one issue we're running into is that Mobile is showing all of these policies, and we don't necessarily need them to show up. I wonder if there is a way to keep them in Epic, but not let them sync to Mobile. Otherwise, I'm not sure it's a bad idea to keep a separate record.

So, maybe we should have someone check on these to see if they are still active and what company holds the policy now? Or is there really any point?

Coral · October 19, 2016, 09:57:32 AM

So, maybe we should have someone check on these to see if they are still active and what company holds the policy now? Or is there really any point?
[/quote]

To what end? How many do you have? Is it worth the investment of time spect to do this? How often will you do this?

Jan Regnier · October 19, 2016, 10:03:14 AM

Quote from: Coral on October 19, 2016, 09:57:32 AM
So, maybe we should have someone check on these to see if they are still active and what company holds the policy now? Or is there really any point?

To what end? How many do you have? Is it worth the investment of time spect to do this? How often will you do this?
[/quote]

And..if you are no longer contracted with the company(s) that have these policies they won't give you any information anyway. I put in policy status as UNA - Update Not Available.

Heather Reetz · December 14, 2016, 04:09:03 PM

We are going to pull a report to get the policy info on our Individual Life policies.

Then we are going to cancel them in Epic and inactivate any customers who only have that policy.

Out of 205 policies, we are only still getting commission on 3 of them. We'll leave the 3 in Epic for now.

We've determined that if we ever get calls on them, we have to redirect them to the company anyway.

Thank you for all of your insight!