Sagicor Life Jamaica (SLJ) has introduced tele-underwriting to its service offerings, as part of the company’s mission to create greater efficiencies within its business segments.

Sagicor said the amenity is the first of its kind in Jamaica and would set a new standard for service delivery across the industry.

The move is intended to drive down costs for clients while simultaneously providing an alternative to traditionally written documents by offering telephone consultations with underwriters, which are then followed up with email confirmation of matters discussed with clients over the phone.

Audrey Flowers Clarke, vice president, insurance operations at Sagicor Life Jamaica, said: “Tele-underwriting opens the door for underwriting professionals to interact directly with new and existing clients. Our underwriters arrange telephone consultations to retrieve necessary information for the underwriting process. They also clarify inconsistent or vague information on application forms as a value-added service to our clients.”

HIGHLY TRAINED PROFESSIONALS ON UNDERWRITING TEAM

The implementation of tele-underwriting underscores SLJ’s commitment to innovation and digitisation – to bolster service delivery options with a view to providing greater choices for clients. 

The company’s underwriting team, which is made up of highly trained professionals, will be using a new document called an Electronic Application Amendment Document (E32) which is a digitised version of the Application Amendment Document (A32) to request and accept statements from clients via the tele-underwriting channel. A paper-based form remains in place for clients who prefer to complete business the traditional way.

A pilot launch of the project began on June 15, with full rollout slated for July 5, 2021. 

The launch of Sagicor’s tele-underwriting service will provide greater efficiency for all stakeholders, including the company’s over 600 strong financial advisors.

Flowers Clarke noted that “the introduction of the service is in keeping with the company’s continued efforts to improve upon its service options for greater convenience”.

In 2019, Sagicor rolled out eLife, an innovative online portal for the purchasing of life insurance policies in Jamaica. The eLife platform allows the purchase of coupon life insurance, critical illness and investment-type policies and does not require a medical certificate. It also allows application review within 24 hours and 24/7 online technical assistance. In addition to eLife, Sagicor Life also launched the Client Web portal last year, which allows Sagicor Life individual life insurance clients to securely request disbursements, view policy information in full detail and transfer policy pay-outs directly to their bank accounts. Since the pandemic, the portal was updated to also facilitate the online payment of insurance premiums. Within the first month of this update, the company saw some 5,000 transactions of premium payments being conducted on the platform.