Digital Underwriting -A faster and amicable approach to insurability Qorus Innovation in Insurance Awards 2022

Life insurance underwriting has historically been a lengthy, manual process. And for those who aren’t fans of doctors or needles, it can be a scary and powerful reason to remain uninsured . To address these barriers, Principal brought together a team of internal experts to evaluate changes in the healthcare industry that could lead to big changes for a life insurance customer’s experience. Suppose an application requires additional medical information to qualify -insurance labs or attending physicians' statement (APS). Could we re-imagine the underwriting experience with instantaneous access to digital health information offering an easy, noninvasive, digitized journey? Can we shorten the almost 30-day underwriting process for APS applicants to less than ten days? And, in the scenario that a global pandemic could reset social rules and close the entire world, are we ready to keep offering uninterrupted life insurance application services? For Principal, the answer was yes. In March 2020, shortly after COVID-19 limited in-person interactions and created formidable challenges for our underwriting team, we were in a unique position to challenge the underwriting timeline and enhance the user experience by using the accelerated underwriting process -we were already known for- and enhancing it with the use of digital health data to eliminate the need for an APS when it was necessary, something that was extremely difficult to obtain in the midst of a global pandemic. Our early and extensive experimentation with electronic medical records set us up for the COVID environment and created a model for other carriers, who were not far enough in their experimentation, to follow. The result? The use of digital health records as a new norm for underwriting; A needleless and visit-less experience; And a fully digital underwriting process completed in record time.