As one of the technologies helping to speed the closing of new business and meet the transactional expectations of today’s distributors and end-customers, automated underwriting is increasingly in demand by life insurers. StoneRiver has sought to respond to that market appetite by enhancing the automated underwriting capabilities in version 7.5 of its web-based LifeSuite new business system.

Improvements to LifeSuite include what the vendor calls highly configurable case assignment functionality with out-of-office and automatic related case assignments; additional lab vendor interfaces, and enhanced support for MVR and Prescription history providers; and advanced automatic case decisioning and export to policy administration systems.

“StoneRiver’s expanded functionality in LifeSuite shows the vendor’s commitment to improving an insurer’s ability to automate the underwriting function,” comments Karen Monks, senior analyst, Celent. “LifeSuite already had a high level of functionality to meet the underwriting needs of an insurer; the new system expands this base particularly in the third-party data support and case management.”

LifeSuite streamlines the entire new business process from application receipt through coverage approval, providing the most efficient and consistent automated underwriting solution available, the vendor claims. The application’s suite of tools helps maximize an insurance organization’s effectiveness, facilitating decreased time to issue, increased growth and reduced policy acquisition costs, the vendor asserts. LifeSuite Collaborator agent portal software adds the enablement of better communication and understanding between agents and underwriters, according to Steve Horneman, a spokesman for StoneRiver.

StoneRiver touts LifeSuite for advanced automation through the underwriting and data aggregation component to the new business process.  When combined with use of LifeSuite Collaborator, according to Horneman, “the net result can be the culmination of improved agent satisfaction and reductions in the sale-to issuance lifecycle embedded in the carrier new business process.”

Other key enhancements to version 7.5 of LifeSuite, according to Horneman include: seamless integration to StoneRiver’s LifeApply e-Application; application data entry enhanced for fully reflexive questions; and certification for SQL 2012, MS .Net 5.0.