It’s no secret that there is a gap between financial services and the younger professionals who are beginning to accumulate assets and wealth.
However, that gap is starting to narrow as financial advisors begin to take notice of millennial clients. The demographic makes up the largest workforce in the country, and as they begin to have children and put down roots, there’s a critical need to protect their families should the unforeseen and unspeakable happen.
That’s where life insurance comes in, but there’s a disconnect between clients’ needs and financial advisors’ priorities.
Financial advisors have historically been hesitant to offer life insurance to their investment clients for two primary reasons.
First, the potential return to compensate the time it takes to go through the life insurance sales process usually isn’t worthwhile. Advisors find that, from beginning to end, the process takes too long and requires too much of their time. Applicants themselves can also be turned off by the process of having to undergo invasive medical tests and provide blood and urine samples.
Second, advisors can be uncomfortable asking clients personal questions about their health and lifestyle.
However, accelerated underwriting, a new development in the life insurance industry, solves both of those problems and will actually make it easy for advisors to sell life insurance, especially to younger clients.
Accelerated underwriting allows financial advisors to sell a policy to clients within seconds of completing the questionnaire. It uses information like motor vehicle records, pharmaceutical records and general information sources like LexisNexis to score the applicant and collect personal data in real time. This advanced pool of data allows for a policy to be generated without the need for an underwriter and/or medical tests.
What kind of data are we talking about? Resources like LexisNexus house a plethora of information about the applicant’s lifestyle, such as cigarette purchases and gym memberships. This detailed information is compiled together into scoring data that allows life insurance companies to make offers to applicants without requiring them to go through the full medical underwriting process.
Accelerated underwriting was designed specifically for younger, healthier consumers, which makes it the perfect tool to build a relationship with millennial clients.