(Image source: Zinnia website.)
Zinnia (Greenwich, Conn.) has added a whole life chassis to its Zahara policy administration platform, giving life insurers a configurable foundation for launching whole life products.
The chassis is designed to let carriers and distributors configure and launch whole life products in as few as three months, according to a Zinnia statement. The company says the offering is aimed particularly at final expense and other small-face-amount products, where carriers may face high policy volumes on systems not designed for that scale.
George Esposito, CEO, Zinnia.
“The growth here is volume, not premium. Hundreds of thousands of small face policies,” comments George Esposito, CEO, Zinnia. “Carriers do not win that business on systems built for one-off, custom contracts. We built this chassis so a whole life product launches in a quarter and runs at volume on day one.”
Zinnia says the life insurance market is seeing demand for final expense and other small-face products move toward middle- and lower-income households as the population ages. The company cites LIMRA data showing U.S. whole life new annualized premium reached $6.4 billion in 2025, with whole life accounting for 37 percent of total individual life premium.
The company says policy count has grown faster than premium for several consecutive quarters, creating a need for systems that can support smaller policies at higher volume while keeping servicing costs under control.
Structured Policy Data
Zahara is designed as a system of record in which policy data and calculations can be queried through APIs rather than being locked behind screens or batch cycles, according to Zinnia. The company says that architecture is intended to support carriers’ AI and agentic strategies by providing structured access to core policy data at scale.
The whole life chassis lets carriers configure product structures, calculations, business rules and workflows to fit their product designs, riders and distribution needs.
Core capabilities include product configuration and calculations for premiums, cash values, benefits, riders and policy rules, including dividends, paid-up additions, policy loans and non-forfeiture options.
The chassis also supports new business and policy issuance by connecting illustrations, case creation, policy data and issuance workflows through APIs. Zinnia says it is designed to support simplified issue and high-volume distribution patterns.
Michael Celi, Chief Product Officer, Zinnia.
Post-issue servicing capabilities include premium activity, status changes, reinstatements, surrenders and customer updates. Zahara also supports digital experiences for customers, agents and operations teams, as well as enterprise integration with calculation services, case management, APIs, accounting, reporting and other operational systems.
“The cost and delay in this industry usually show up in integration and testing, not in product design,” comments Michael Celi, Chief Product Officer, Zinnia. “We built the whole life chassis so carriers can begin testing from the earliest stages of implementation, not at the end, where most timelines break.”
Zinnia says Zahara now offers pre-built frameworks spanning annuities and life, allowing carriers to launch from a common foundation across product lines.
Zinnia provides technology for life insurance and annuity carriers, distributors, advisors and consumers. The company is an Eldridge business and is backed by funds managed by KKR and Vista Credit Partners.