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Life Portraits® ES Helps ALFA Agents Focus on Prospects
The Alabama Farmers Federation founded ALFA Insurance in 1946 as part of its commitment to providing “strength through unity” for farmers throughout the state. By 2004, ALFA Insurance had leveraged their vision of unwavering strength and unparalleled service to become one of Forbes magazine’s 200 Best Small Companies in America. Today the company has more than 1 million policies in force, serving policyholders in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.
ALFA’s commitment to sales automation started with an assessment of their legacy system nearly ten years ago. The existing, DOS-based system was developed internally and supported only the most basic functions. The company was growing, both in terms of the policy base and the kinds of coverage offered. They needed a solution that would bring them up-to-date and handle the company’s long-term needs. “Our choice would have a big effect on the way we did business,” says Jody Carroll, ALFA’s Director of Information Technology. An increasing number of applications were being kicked back for more information, and the average time to issue was growing. “We wanted to make it possible for our agents to focus on building the relationship with prospective new policyholders,” notes Carroll. “They might have to deal with 100 different forms and an increasing amount of detail. That made it hard to focus on the sale.”
A Long Search Leads to an Obvious Choice
The ALFA review team knew that choosing the right solution wasn’t just about immediate change. They could see that any front-end sales system would have to be part of a comprehensive, integrated solution down the road. They wanted to be sure that the choice they made would accommodate long-term goals without making unnecessary process changes along the way. “We were concerned about acceptance,” says Carroll. “Our policyholders are old friends—almost like family—and our agents are a big part of their communities. Having them fumble with new technology—having technology get in the way—was a major concern.” Needless to say, the company choice would have to be easy to use, highly intuitive, and extremely flexible.
ALFA’s search was extensive. They visited prospective vendors nationwide, researched industry directions and used the experience to define parameters for their ultimate goal: a paperless system that delivers true straight through processing.
You might say that ALFA’s search ended right where it began. The company had relied on Fiserv Insurance Solutions to satisfy a variety of needs for years. When they saw Life Portraits ES browser-based capabilities, it was clear they had the answer. Life Portraits ES offers users the flexibility of operating in either desktop or Internet mode. “The robust, browser-based functionality of Life Portraits ES was exactly what ALFA insurance needed,” says Deb Richards, Senior Vice President of Life Insurance for Fiserv Insurance Solutions.
Jody Carroll and the ALFA Insurance review team agreed. “The way our agents work, we believed that a browser-based system was the way to go. Life Portraits had the right tools and we had a high level of confidence in Fiserv as a partner.”
Engineering Acceptance
Once they pulled the trigger, ALFA had two implementation hurdles to overcome. The first was the actual rollout. A limited group of agents was selected to run Life Portraits ES in “beta” mode while the company collected feedback from the agents and monitored data.
The process went smoothly—and produced unexpected benefits. “We learned a lot about how the sales process works,” notes Carroll. “The reflexive questioning built into Life Portraits ES facilitated a better understanding of our customers’ needs and has certainly had a positive impact on our marketing approach.”
Once the testing period ended, the second implementation hurdle was acceptance. The new sales system called on agents to learn new sales and presentation skills without jeopardizing the way customers felt about them or the company. Toward that end, the ALFA marketing staff put together an incentive program designed to inspire agents to find a way to integrate new Life Portraits ES tools. They started a contest that gives agents a chance to win significant prizes each time an application is submitted electronically. As a result, agent acceptance has far exceeded expectations. “We’ve been extremely surprised and pleased with the ease of both implementation and acceptance,” states Carroll.
Strong Acceptance Lowers Costs, Time to Issue
If incentives have encouraged agents to try Life Portraits ES, success has encouraged them to accept it. Within two months, approximately 40% of the applications submitted to ALFA were submitted electronically. Because of the checks within Life Portraits, all of these applications are complete.
For ALFA Insurance, Life Portraits ES' benefits have been immediate and gratifying. In the past, up to one-third of the applications submitted were incomplete or contained errors requiring a second visit by the agent. Beyond adding a potential sales obstacle, this contributed a significant delay in the time to issue business. As Alfa continues to move towards 100% utilization of the electronic application, they expect to reduce their average time to issue business from the current 18 days to between 11 and 13 days.
Jody Carroll also reports improvements that help the company deliver new products or make changes to existing products. Beyond the home office flexibility built into Life Portraits ES, the new program makes it possible to run fast and efficient regression testing. According to Carroll, ALFA is able to run 1,100-1,200 application processing tests in a day or less and about the same number of illustration tests in less than four hours.
For more information:
Call 800-943-2851 or e-mail solutions@fiserv.com to learn more about Life Portraits® ES.
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