Approximately 55 percent of life insurance companies have adopted or are in the process of adopting e-applications for at least some of their products, according to a new report.
Celent, a research advisory unit of the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, discloses this finding in a new report, “Have e-Signatures Arrived: An Update for Life Insurers.” An update to an earlier Celent report published in 2007, the 2013 survey re-examines the issues that insurers face as they move toward straight-through processing, enabled by process automation and punctuated by use of e-signatures.
According to the 2013 Celent survey, the vagueness of the federal and state laws, which don’t prescribe e-signature technology, at first encouraged early adopters toward the most robust technology solutions available, such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). But many insurers have since determined that less robust (and less expensive) solutions such as click-wrap (i.e., having users click “I Accept” on a webpage) or nonbiometric signature captures are sufficient.
The survey observes that 70 percent of respondents use click wrap versus 30 percent in 2007. Similarly, one-third used PKI in 2007, and none use it today.