The Little Carrier That Could
Addition by Subtraction
Texas Life's infrastructure has been so successful that, although the insurer has grown the number of policies underwritten tenfold, it has been able to reduce the total number of employees in its organization from 120 in 1997, to 102 today. And, although credit for the reduction in headcount is owed to the system, Steward and Kendrick concede that Texas Life's system is still a work in progress. "We are always looking to create more efficiency that requires less user interaction," Kendrick asserts.
Fortunately, the insurer's informal project prioritization process and its close-knit staff are helping Texas Life make progress with the system. "We tend to let end-users drive the modification process," Kendrick explains. "Our staff is small, and we are all in one building. Our users know the programmers, and they won't hesitate to call them and say, 'These are the changes that I'd like to have made.'" Once a request has been communicated, Steward will discuss the end-user's idea with the programmer and a timeline for the project will be created.
"Although the process seems informal, it works," Kendrick continues. "Also, if a project is only a one-day or two-hour thing, Mike [Steward] doesn't need to know about it." Larger IT decisions, however, are made by Steward and the carrier's CEO, Steve Kates.
Texas Life is currently undergoing a large initiative that required a top-level executive discussion. Steward and his team are working on a project that will simplify the underwriter's imaging process. Steward explains: "We've done imaging for a long time as part of our historical archiving process. Since we deal with independent agents, we get electronic applications, some that come from software that our company uses and some come from their [software]."
Kendrick notes that the enrollment software that agents use can provide data electronically. "We have to map the data from various enrollment packages into our [homegrown] structure," he says. "Once that data is in our format, we electronically send it into our new business system with no manual entry."
In order to simplify the application review process, the insurer has begun installing high resolution, dual flat-screen ViewSonic (Walnut, Calif.) monitors. Although the carrier tossed around the idea of installing a single large screen at each end-user's desktop, it eventually opted for a solution that was intuitively easier to use. The choice of vendors was an easy one for Texas Life, which had purchased other ViewSonic products in the past: ViewSonic's price and the brightness of its screens made for a good fit, according to Steward.
The carrier has also embarked upon an e-billing initiative that works with the payroll clerks at worksites rather than with individual policyholders. Although Steward concedes that the homegrown project, which currently is in production, is not rocket-science, it's a useful tool, he says - especially when it comes to policy renewals.
He explains that "If a policy costs $5 a week, that money will be forwarded" to Texas Life by the policyholder's employer. And, although payments will be forwarded directly from the worksite, Texas Life is able to deduce information about individual employees based on the size of the payments that it receives.
"The system works something like a spreadsheet - group-level payroll totals are maintained and adjusted as the individual employee deductions are changed," Steward explains. "The goal is to get a total that matches the total payroll amount withheld for each person/policy and for the group." Additionally, Texas Life offers a method for the group to submit a file of withholdings per employee and the carrier will respond with an exception listing, which must then be reconciled. "This saves time for all those who pay as billed; they process automatically."
If the payment for a particular employee is missing, Texas Life is "able to ask questions like, 'What happened to this policyholder whose payment wasn't deducted?' and 'Why didn't Joe send in his $5?'" That way, if policyholders leave their employers, Texas Life can ring them up and see if they'd like to continue doing business with the insurer.
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