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Life Health > Running Your Business > Selling

How Life and Annuity Sites Phone Home

By Karen Valdez

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What You Need to Know

  • An application programming interface can connect one system to another.
  • They can help clients use the web to combine data from a wide range of financial services vendors.
  • They can also help you get broad view of what a client has.

You interact with APIs all the time and probably don’t even know it.

When you clicked the tracking number on your last Amazon purchase, that was an API improving your customer experience.

Automated underwriting on a life insurance policy or annuity contract that retrieved data from insurance backend systems and third-party databases for an immediate decision is another.

Put simply, APIs — application programming interfaces — connect different systems to integrate data or functionality and transform business processes and offerings.

APIs also can connect a vast number of microservices to create the seamless tailored customer experiences and robust ecosystems that you’re enjoying online.

When it comes to the life and annuity market, APIs can have a dramatic impact on business ecosystems and processes.

Here are three API-driven business outcomes that enhance the insurance customer’s journey.

1. Customer Experience Improvement

APIs are foundational to creating insurance ecosystems.

The most common examples of ecosystems are Amazon and eBay.

Shoppers go there for an opportunity to consider many products, review their attributes, as well as add-ons from partners and service providers.

Ecosystems recognize customers, collect their histories, and make informed suggestions appropriate to their interests, demographics, and more.

Sales processes are accelerated by virtue of being timely, personalized, and digital.

Ecosystems fueled by APIs help advisors by offering a seamless customer experience and fostering relationships.

Consumers benefit from better experiences and personalized offerings, which leads to increased retention, referrals, and satisfaction.

2. Holistic Financial Views

Traditionally, information about life insurance and annuities holdings has existed separately from investment and other financial reporting.

That makes it difficult to create and offer a comprehensive customer view, sometimes leading customers to question why they even bought those products.

APIs, however, enable life insurance and annuity ecosystems to seamlessly interface with investment ecosystems providing advisors and their clients an integrated view of financial portfolios.

The impact is profound because a comprehensive view facilitates more informed discussions and decisions between advisors and their clients.

At the same time, consumers are reminded of the value these products provide in their overall financial plans.

3. Administrative Burden Reduction

By retrieving data from systems and data sources, APIs can help dramatically reduce the administrative load for agents and brokers, giving them more time to do the important work of managing relationships with both life and annuity providers and the contract holders.

APIs enable advisors to access and update customer and prospect information – ideally in real time – and offer similar self-service options to consumers.

In addition, APIs can link to broker/dealer systems to interface with suitability requirements making it easier to manage fiduciary responsibilities and risks.

With fewer administrative duties, advisors have expanded capacity for revenue-generating activities.

APIs help ambitious insurers steamline a customer-centric offering essential to improving today’s functionality while enabling tomorrow’s innovation.

Karen ValdezKaren Valdez is head of life and annuity product marketing at EIS, a company that operates a cloud-based digital platform for the insurance industry.

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