This is how I envision the mortgage industry today: A middle-aged woman dressed in a suit balancing on a unicycle on a platform that keeps moving. She is juggling five different objects and has a group of spectators shouting requests like “close your eyes!” and “juggle faster!”
Have you ever been to a Cirque du Soleil show? I saw one for the first time in March and it was incredible. I saw “O” which is their water performance. It takes place in, around and above a 1.5-million-gallon-of-water pool.
So you say you have an innovative solution, eh? Some may have delivered this message with tremendous enthusiasm sometime in their career and some may have heard this message at least once.
Talk to any life insurance company and they will tell you that attending physician statements (APS) (also referred to as digital or electronic medical records) are the biggest delay in underwriting new applications. Ordering an APS is expensive ($50-$150 each), takes time to retrieve (10-30+ days) and is necessary for 20-30% of all life insurance applications (and if it is reinsurance, they require an APS for each application).
A 2014 Oxford University study concluded that jobs in the “service” and “sales and related” categories have high probability (greater than .7) of computerization (computerization is job automation by means of computer-controlled equipment). According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, the underwriting profession is vulnerable to having at least 35% of its tasks automated. Now, before you dust off your resume, let’s think about this a little further.
Recent advances in cognitive technology make life insurance underwriters more effective at assessing policy applications. This technology allows life carriers to extract key data from documents, process it into relevant information, and present it back to Underwriters – all within the context of their normal application review process. Anecdotal evidence indicates that this can increase the productivity of underwriters by 30% when assessing complicated applications.