The Protector Press

Spring 2012

Underwriting Insights And Innovations

By Robert Wade – Director of Underwriting & Associate Actuary, Individual Disability Insurance

Disability Income Insurance underwriting is not everyone's favorite topic, I admit. But it is the front door for your customers to obtain The Standard's premier IDI coverages. As the director of Underwriting for IDI and Guarantee Issue at The Standard, I want to share my approach to underwriting as well as some ideas we'll be exploring.

After 14 years in IDI product design, implementation and management, I was tapped by Dawn McMaster to apply my product knowledge to The Standard's IDI and Guarantee Issue underwriting programs to give our producers even more ways to present The Standard and Protector Platinum.

Our regional directors in IDI Sales will tell you I like to experiment. I believe trying out new underwriting services and product ideas in the marketplace is the only way to advance the IDI industry. And the winning ideas are worth it — like Protector Platinum's Compassionate Care^SM benefit and our PolicyEX delivery system. I hope to try more experimental underwriting programs in order to roll out the successful ones to all producers who work with The Standard. Look for a new simplified underwriting process first.

My commitment to you is to enhance and expand our underwriting programs by:

• finding as many ideas as possible,
• looking for those with high marketability, and
• testing those ideas with due diligence for long-term sustainability.

Advancing The IDI Industry

One ongoing focus is how The Standard and the IDI industry participate in technology, and how technology can improve underwriting efficiency. IDI has been implemented roughly the same way for decades. Now we're learning how to take advantage of publicly available information on sources like Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as proprietary vendor databases.

These online platforms give us new opportunities to quickly research individuals, conduct routine background checks and understand their disability risks. Currently, these additional forms of information are still being layered on top of traditional underwriting methods.

Can we at The Standard, or the industry in general, eventually do away with or streamline old forms of information-gathering that are more intrusive? I'll keep you posted on trends like these and look forward to giving you better IDI underwriting tools over the coming years.