Ceylinco Life first to launch tele-underwriting in Sri Lanka

Tuesday, 23 October 2012 00:02 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Life insurance leader Ceylinco Life has launched tele-underwriting in Sri Lanka, adopting an industry practice in developed markets to improve communications between prospective policyholders and the insurer.

Intended to minimise misunderstandings between insured and insurer, and eliminate non-disclosure related issues at the claims stage, tele-underwriting is carried out by a team of 25 trained professional underwriters.

Ceylinco Life is the first life insurer in Sri Lanka to use tele-underwriting, a practice that can also lead to reduced lapsing of policies.

The process begins after an applicant for life cover completes a proposal form, usually with the assistance of a sales agent. Once the application is received at Ceylinco Life’s head office, tele-underwriters begin calling applicants at random to ensure that questions in the form have been accurately answered and that the prospective policyholders clearly understand the benefits provided by the products being purchased.

“This is an important step in promoting better customer relations and improving persistency ratios,” said Jagath Abhayaratne, Senior Assistant General Manager – Operations at Ceylinco Life. “We are already checking about 25 per cent of the proposal forms through tele-underwriting, and hope to increase this figure to 50 per cent by the end of the year.”

He said more than 45 per cent of life insurance business in the USA is tele-underwritten. In the United Kingdom, non-disclosure rates pertaining to life insurance products had reduced from 11 per cent to four per cent following the introduction of tele-underwriting.

Tele-underwriters take the applicants through the questions and the answers covering their basic information and health-related disclosures, resulting in a ‘fine-tuning’ of the proposal forms in a process that benefits both the customer and the company. It also encourages insurance sales people to be more accurate in the completion of these forms.

Ceylinco Life has a deployed sales force of 5,000 and has more than 850,000 lives covered by active policies. The market leader in Sri Lanka’s long-term insurance sector for the past eight years, the company is acknowledged as the benchmark for innovation in the local insurance industry for its work in product research and development, customer service and professional development.