(Image credit: Jonny Lindner.)
Insurance Technologies, LLC (Colorado Springs, Colo.), a provider of sales and regulatory automation solutions for the insurance and financial services industries, has announced that FireLight Sales Platform now provides carriers and distributors various features and flexible workflow capabilities that support complying with the New York Insurance Regulation 187, now called the Suitability and Best Interests in Life Insurance and Annuity Transactions.
Effective August 1, 2019, the Suitability and Best Interests in Life Insurance and Annuity Transactions Regulation requires insurers and producers to comply with new requirements for any annuity contract transaction. Six months following, insurers must comply with the new requirements for life.
Katherine Dease, VP, Insurance Technologies.
Insurance Technologies identifies the challenge of the new regulation for insurers and producers will be in providing a fully-defensible record of their Best Interest recommendations. The vendor says that FireLight gives insurers and distributors the flexibility and speed-to-market needed to process requirements for the new regulation within a single sales process across multiple lines of business and product types. To integrate suitability requirements into their sales processes, FireLight can be used for the following, as described by the vendor:
• Workflow options for firms to address the requirements ahead of the sale in a pre-sale activity, at the time of the sale within the application or in a post-sale activity;
• Collecting, evaluating and recording clients’ need profiles prior to any product recommendation;
• Leveraging the data capture through the pre-sale transaction to filter products available to meet the clients’ needs;
• Meeting the regulation requirements by dynamically generating the product guides and disclosures;
• e-Signature to record that the client has reviewed the product suitability information and reviewed the disclosures;
• Workflow options for suitability reviews, including heightened suitability and suitability scoring for automated suitability;
• Back office workflow support to ensure all data is collected and disclosed for paper submissions; and
• Creation of a defensible audit trail for a firm’s defined process.
Streamlines Workflow while Providing Complete Audit
“As more regulatory changes focusing on Best Interest begin to take form, it’s important that carriers and distributors have the tools and resources they need to stay compliant with all the necessary requirements,” comments Katherine Dease, VP, product management, Insurance Technologies. “Using FireLight not only streamlines the entire pre-sale to sale workflow, but it also creates a fully-defensible workflow with a complete audit of all data collected, providing them with the information they need to support the sale being in the best interest of the clients. FireLight provides carriers and distributors the flexibility to incorporate their defined suitability processes and disclosures within their unique sales processes, whether that is in the pre-sale process or at time of application for new business, and post-sale transactions for inforce business.”
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