SE2 Acquires Sales Tech Firm Breathe Life

What You Need to Know

SE2 helps about 45 life and annuity issuers run their businesses.
Breathe Life came to life in Montreal in 2017.
The Breathe Life investor list has included AIG, AXA, Power Financial and RGA.

A technology company is placing a bet on the idea that the role of live humans in financial services sales will continue to vary from company to company, and might shrink and grow over time.

SE2 announced today that it has acquired Breathe Life.

SE2 is a Topeka, Kansas-based company that provides technology and administrative services for about 45 life and annuity issuers. The firm was once part of Security Benefit. It and Security Benefit are now both owned by Eldridge — a Greenwich, Connecticut-based holding company.

Breathe Life is a Montreal-based company that sells cloud-based sales technology support services to life and annuity issuers and distributors. The firm’s customers can decide whether to use the systems to support advisor-driven sales, online self-service sales, or some combination of self-service and advisor-driven sales.

SE2 said the deal will help it offer insurers better, lower-cost digital sales systems.

The Birth of Breathe Life

Ian Jeffrey, Breathe Life’s CEO and co-founder, started the company in 2017 with help from Diagram Ventures, a Montreal-based venture capital firm.

What It Means

Smaller and midsize life and annuity issuers will continue to adopt the same kinds of online sales and self-service systems that big life insurers now offer, and, in many cases, with features that give agents, brokers and advisors ways to reach customers and prospects through those systems.

In some cases, the usability, stability and financial professional-friendliness of the online systems could have as much effect as crediting rates on where consumers’ and financial professionals’ interest flows.