Plum Life Inc. announced the launch of its new digital platform aimed at helping advisors sell life insurance. Plum Life pitches a friction-free buying experience for both advisors and their clients. The company says its digital buying experience addresses the desire of consumers for professional advice combined with the convenience of a digital buying experience.
“We saw an opportunity in the market to reinvent the way advisors sell life insurance,” says Manish Bhatt, CEO & Co-Founder, Plum Life. “So much of the focus has been about simplifying the customer experience but given that agent sales account for over 90 percent of all life insurance sold in the United States, we set out to also focus on the advisor experience. We believe that by making it easy, advisors can spend less time on managing cases and more time helping their clients with life insurance and focusing on segments that have previously been ignored.”
Plum Life says it provides a unique opportunity for advisors to offer their clients a simple and streamlined digital life insurance buying process. The company seeks to make the purchase of life insurance easy through broad coverage options, a growing suite of products, competitive pricing, a fully transparent underwriting process and the ability to get quick underwriting decisions. The company’s products, issued by SBLI and reinsured by Swiss Re, are meant to offer competitively priced protection without the typical inconvenience.
Plum Life says it seeks to address the protection gap, which remains intact despite the appearance of many new direct insurers. Plum Life was built in recognition of the fact that, despite the emphasis of the convenience of direct sales in the InsurTech movement, consumers still want guidance and the reassurance of validating their decisions with a financial professional. “Until now, no digital solution existed to help the insurance advisor do this,” a Plum Life statement says.
According to a recent BCG/LIMRA study, consumers seek dialogue with a financial professional to help ease their concerns around understanding the costs of insurance, policy terms and policy types. Working with a financial professional can also increase satisfaction post-policy issue and help drive down policy lapse rates. Advice channels also convert potential buyers at a higher rate and result in higher protection levels, according to LIMRA’s Individual Life Insurance Consumer Survey, 2018.
Easing Worries
“The process of buying life insurance is fraught with emotional highs and lows for the consumer with doubt and financial insecurity often settling in,” the Plum Life statement says. “Advisors ease these worries and help consumers through the buying process.”
Plum Life’s proposition also seeks to meet consumers’ expectation of smart digital solutions that are tailor-made for their needs, offering the convenience of being able to transact online and on their time with the added benefit of advice. “We’re reimagining the kitchen table,” says Bhatt. “We have always looked at technology as augmenting and transforming the interactions clients have with their advisor instead of replacing them.”
The Plum Life portal gives advisors access to a suite of marketing tools, comprehensive reports and dashboards to manage their business, according to the company statement. Advisors can also interact with clients right off the portal, send reminders and track the progress of a case to help pull customers through the sales funnel.
