(Image credit: Pete Linforth.)
LIMRA (Windsor, Conn.) and The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative (Malvern, Pa.) have announced plans to pursue a blockchain use case that will streamline the licensing validation and appointment process for agents.
A new working group, representing nine members of the RiskStream Collaborative life and annuity sector, will use state and federal regulatory data to develop a licensing and appointments application, the organizations say. The app will automatically validate agents’ and advisers’ licensing credentials to sell specific life insurance and annuity products. The information will be available to all carriers and intermediaries that are part of the RiskStream Collaborative.
Gina Birchall, COO, LIMRA, LOMA and LL Global.
“According to LIMRA research, there are 200,000 independent agents in the United States who have an average of 11 separate carrier sales agreements, requiring considerable duplicative paperwork to comply with the growing regulatory requirements to validate agents’ credentials to sell specific products in each state,” comments Gina Birchall, COO, LIMRA, LOMA and LL Global. “Blockchain offers a unique solution that can benefit our industry and its consumers. Streamlining these core business processes will save carriers and distributors money and resources, allowing them to offer greater value to their customers.”
The RiskStream Collaborative U.S. Life & Annuity Advisory Board unanimously voted to select licensing and appointment as its next use case.
Christopher McDaniel, President, RiskStream Collaborative.
“This is the second use case that the U.S. Life & Annuity Advisory Board has chosen to develop in 2019, and it offers great promise for the industry,” comments Christopher McDaniel, president, RiskStream Collaborative. “This use case and the Mortality Monitor have the potential to provide a competitive advantage for participants by lowering industry transaction costs, improving customer experience and increasing the speed and security of data transfers.”
Application Planned to Debut 2020
The RiskStream Collaborative says it will begin to build a proof of concept for one of the two use cases selected in the coming months, and that the application is expected to be available in 2020.
The Institutes, a provider of risk management and insurance education and research, launched the not-for-profit consortium in 2017 and in 2018 partnered with LIMRA, the largest global research trade association for the life insurance and financial services industry.
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