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September 06, 2013 at 11:14 AM
Primerica, Inc., a third-party distributor of financial products to middle-income households in North America, is the first distributor to use Insurance Technologies LLC’s FireLight software for its e-application business fulfillment platform for its annuity business.
Offered under the name AnnuityPro, FireLight is accessible to Primerica advisors through the Primerica Advisor POL portal. The distributor will utilize FireLight to process annuity applications, including client onboarding documents, suitability forms and state-filed forms. All orders will be routed electronically to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. By using a HTML5 technology, FireLight can be viewed and operated on a tablet device.
Jim Ferrell, vice president of FireLight product management, says that the software is in use by several carriers, including Ameritas, Lincoln Financial, Ohio Financial, Phoenix Cos. (life and annuity business) and Sagicor. Primerica is its first direct distributor client.
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Ferrell says Insurance Technologies will continue to pursue the distributor market. In terms of the adoption of technology in the insurance and annuity space, Ferrell sees two district markets: the captive agent market, in which the company the agent works for owns the hardware and software, and the other is the broad independent agent category. In the latter category, the agent would own his own software and desktop since it would not be provided by a distributor.
“For those firms to where the desktop is owned by their company, they’ve made some pretty big advances in technology the past nine years,” Ferrell says. “But those firms where their desktops are not owned (by a company), that’s where we’re really making strides. That’s 70 percent of the marketplace for annuities right now.”
