Update News for January 2013

January 22, 2013
COMPULIFE
Update News

Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin:

- Happy New Year
- Quebec Premium Tax
- Actuarial Guideline 38 – AG38
- Term4Sale Listing Renewals
- Can You Help Us Add More Forms?

These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin.

Happy New YearThe New Year is always a great opportunity to extend our ongoing thanks and appreciation to our many subscribers for their continued support of Compulife throughout the past year. Obviously we could not do what we do without the thousands of subscribers who purchase our software. Each subscriber is an important part of the success of this business. Thank you!

We know we have to earn your business and we work hard to do so. We hope that our ongoing efforts have contributed to your success in 2012 and that they will continue to add to your profitability in the New Year. We hope our software earns you back many times more than what it costs you to use it.

All the very best to you and your family in 2013.

Quebec Premium TaxThe premium tax rate for Quebec has been reduced from 2.55% to 2.3%. This impacts UL plans where the tax rate is factored into the premium calculation after the T100 premium component has been priced. Not all companies/products calculate the tax in the same way, and so some UL/T100 premiums are unaffected.

IMPORTANT: For those using the Compulife internet engine on their own web servers (not those using our $99 per year web quote option) there is a file you need to ensure you update this month. The file name is “provtax.ini” and the old one needs to be replaced with the new one on your server. The file contains the tax rates for each province.

Actuarial Guideline 38 – AG38While the following has no direct impact on Canadian subscribers, we suspect that reinsurers that do business on both sides of the border have to some degree been impacted by discussions of reserves for long term guarantee products (such as T100) and it explains the rounds of price increases that have been occurring for the past year. So while the following 3 paragraphs were of primary interest to U.S. subscribers, we thought Canadian subscribers would find it interesting.

As a follow-up to last month’s bulletin, we warned you that a new regulatory reserve requirement was going to lead to a large number of no lapse UL products being re-priced. As of the writing of this bulletin, 8 life insurance companies are introducing new rates for their no lapse UL policies effective January 1, 2013. While it was a load of work, we stayed on top of it all during December and all 8 life companies are in the January monthly update.

We fully expect that there will be some further changes during January and that we are likely to be hit with a few last minute changes. A number of companies have been scrambling to get the rate changes processed, and the new rates into our hands. You’d be surprised at the times of the day we are getting some emails with rates attached.

The biggest problem facing agent/brokers is what happens to in progress business. Many companies have requirements that policies actually be issued by December 31st, or the new rates will apply. If you have any questions you will need to be in touch with the companies themselves. It’s going to be a mess for a couple of months.

Term4Sale Listing RenewalsAs occurs each year a certain number of subscribers are late in paying for their term4sale postal code listing renewals. While we try to allow for a grace period, demand for postal code listings has been increasing. Each year we always experience a certain amount of attrition. The good news is that it will open up previously full postal codes for agents who have been wanting them.

If renewals are not received by January 4th, a credit will be issued for the unpaid invoice and the postal code listing(s) will be deleted from the customers account. Once all the deletions have been made, an email will be sent to ALL Compulife subscribers advising that the postal code database has been updated. If you have been wanting to add postal codes, receipt of that email would be a very good time to review your listings to determine if previously full postal codes are now available for purchase.

As always, paid postal code listings are on a first come, first served basis. Once a subscriber has paid for a postal code, they can only be bumped by a subscriber asking for that postal code as a “home” or “free” postal code. If you don’t understand how that works, you can read about it at:

Postal Code AnalyzerCan You Help Us Add More Forms?This is another carry over from the U.S. bulletin and doesn’t apply to Canada with the exception that we stand ready to add life company forms to our Canadian software, if and when we can ever convince a Canadian life company or companies to provide us with their forms. U.S. subscribers consider the feature an important part of the service, and you will see from the following information that we have quite a number of U.S. companies and are trying to add some more.

The first Canadian subscriber, able to convince the first Canadian life insurance company to provide us with their forms, will get a FREE year added to their Compulife subscription.

During December, I had the following email exchange with one of the users of our internet quote engine:

So it would appear that we are missing:

American National
Aviva Life and Annuity Company
John Hancock
Lincoln Benefit Life
MetLife (All Companies)
Minnesota Life
Mutual of Omaha
Nationwide
United of Omaha

Bob Barney
Compulife Software, Inc.

My Office Toll Free (888) 798-3488
Main Office (800) 798-3488
===============================================================

XXXXX XXXXXXX, a Compulife user, wants to leave iPipeline and user our web system but
there is a difference in forms access. Do you have a recommendation?

Thanks

Jon

Available to XXXXX from iPipeline

American General Life Companies – All states except NY (AGL)
American National
Aviva Life and Annuity Company
AXA Equitable
Banner Life
Genworth Life and Annuity Insurance Company
Genworth Life Insurance Company
ING ReliaStar Life Ins Co
ING Security Life of Denver Ins Co
ING USA Annuity and Life Insurance Company
John Hancock
Lincoln Benefit Life
Lincoln National Life Insurance Company
MetLife (All Companies)
Minnesota Life
Mutual of Omaha
Nationwide
North American Company for Life and Health Insurance
Protective Life
Protective Life (Institutional)
Prudential Financial
SBLI (Savings Bank Life Insurance Co of Mass)
Transamerica Life Insurance Co.
United of Omaha

COMPULIFE

American General Life Insurance Company
AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company
Banner Life Insurance Company
Centrian Life Insurance
Genworth Life and Annuity Insurance Co
Genworth Life Insurance Company
Lincoln Life & Annuity Company of NY
Lincoln National Life Insurance Company
North American Co for Life and Health
Protective Life Insurance Company
Pruco Life Insurance Company
Pruco Life Insurance Co of New Jersey
ReliaStar Life Insurance Company (ING)
ReliaStar Life Insurance of NY (ING)
Sagicor Life Insurance Company
Savings Bank Life Insurance Co of MA
Transamerica Financial Life Insurance Co
Transamerica Life Insurance Company
United States Life Ins in the City of NY
William Penn Life Insurance Co of NY

After that email exchange, I went ahead and produced the following email to each of the life companies that were on the list of those whose forms we don’t have. Here is what I wrote:

As you will see from the following email exchange [I copied each of the companies the above exchange], I have a subscriber who would love to switch over to using Compulife’s life company forms database but is delaying that decision as we do not have the forms for [name of the company I was writing] in our system.

NOTE: From the attached email exchange it is clear you are providing your forms to Ipipeline.

Apart from this subscriber, who is also one of your brokers, wanting to save some money (Compulife’s form engine is much less expensive than the one offered by Ipipeline) let me offer some other important reasons why you should also be providing your forms to Compulife.

2. Compulife ONLY provides LOCKED forms to agents. In this way you can be assured that the forms you provide us are not something an agent can tinker with. That gives you security.

3. Competition is healthy. We believe that the more competition that Ipipeline or any other forms provider has, the more competitive those form providers will need to price their products. Remember the good old days, when you had to provide paper forms to agents, and the cost of printing and shipping those forms?. Today those forms are available as PDF files, and your costs to provide those forms should be nothing. Agent/brokers should have as little expense as possible in having access to those forms.

Forms can be added to our system very quickly (we have done some entire companies in a single day). We will do all the work if you can provide the following:

2. A list (usually a spreadsheet) showing:

- - - - a) Name of form

- - - - b) Comments regarding form use

- - - - c) States in which the form is used

- - - - d) Which products the form is used with

- - - - e) any additional information you may have on file re. the form

3. Add Compulife to your normal/routine communications for updates to forms. We need to know is a form has been modified, discontinued or if states have been added or removed.

Bob Barney
Compulife Software, Inc.

My Office Toll Free (888) 798-3488
Main Office (800) 798-3488
===============================================================

The point of sharing this with you is that I heard back from one company who wanted to know how many of our subscribers had been asking for their forms in Compulife. That was a nice way of saying they were only interested in greasing a squeaky wheel. In other words, if you didn’t care if the company’s forms where in Compulife, they didn’t care either.

So here is what I am asking you do to. If one or more of the following companies is a company that you do business with, would you please email the company and tell them that it would be very helpful to you if you could have their forms available in Compulife. And just to make it easy, here’s the list of companies we’d like to add:

NOTE: Lincoln Benefit Life has already begun the process of providing us with their forms.

And if there is a company not on any of the above lists, that you would like to add to our forms library, please don’t be shy in letting us and them know that you want their forms in Compulife

Share This

COMPULIFE

Related Posts