Update News for September 2018 

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

• Compulife Batch Analyzer – The Free Evaluation Ends
•  Reviews – We Almost Hit 50
  
• Table Ratings Coming Quickly
• Why A Separate Database? 
• Compulife API Option 

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

Compulife Batch Analyzer
The Free Evaluation Ends

Most subscribers to Compulife do not have access to the Compulife Batch Analyzer. Currently that option appears on your menu as “grayed out” meaning it does not work. The option is ONLY available to life insurance companies who have purchased the option. At some point we will likely remove the button from the menu for those who do not have access, but in the meantime we are leaving it there so that life insurance companies, who are subscribers, know that the option is available should they wish to purchase it.

As of the writing of this bulletin over 25 life insurance companies were given access to the Compulife Batch Analyzer during the evaluation period which ended August 31st. Our thanks to all who participated. As with any new complicated quoting option there were bugs and issues to resolve and those companies were very helpful in turning up issues we had not run into during our own testing. Some also provided some very good suggestions which helped to improve the new option. Most comments about it have been very kind and positive.

Unlike other options that we market there is no 30 day free trial associated with the Compulife Batch Analyzer. Actually, within a 30 day window of time, a life insurance company can run such a HUGE volume of quote scenarios that they could easily get their fill of analysis for a long time.

A life insurance company who has NOT tried the option, but who is interested in purchasing it, can contact Compulife with a sample scenario of a “batch” that they would like to run. We will talk them through the options needed to run their batch, then run it for them and email them the spreadsheet results of that batch. The end result should nicely explain the capability of the option.

The Compulife Batch Analyzer will be available on a two tier pricing structure.

1. One month use – $960

2. One year subscription – $1,920

The single month use allows that life insurance company unlimited use during that particular month (full month). For example, if someone buys the one month option in the middle of September it will work to the end of October.

The second tier will be an annual subscription that allows unlimited use during the entire year. If you plan to use it once a year, or less frequently, then the one month subscription makes sense; you buy it when you need it. If you plan to use it more than once a year then you will want the one year subscription which is equivalent to buying two one month uses.

The Batch Analyzer will be available as an option to life insurance companies who:

1. Have a Standard License Subscription to Compulife ($300 per year)

2. Provide Compulife with their rate information (if applicable)

3. Sign a CBA license agreement guaranteeing CBA output will not be given to third parties

The CBA agreement can be found here:

 

Reviews – We Almost Hit 50

In July we first told you that we became aware of reviews that had been posted to “Capterra” by three individuals. One review was from a legitimate subscriber, one was from a competitor who had unkind things to say about our product and the other from someone with a real hate agenda, accusing us (among other things) of stealing leads from customers. The last two reviews were removed by Capterra for violating their review policy.

We believe that the number of positive reviews from actual subscribers helped convince Capterra that the two negative review were bogus and violated their policy.

Here’s the current list of reviews:

Thanks to all the subscribers who took the time to post a review. If you haven’t posted a review, can you help push us over 50?

 

Table Ratings Coming Quickly

We are closing in on the first roll out of our Table Ratings quoting tool. As we have explained before, the companies and products in this quoting option will be in a separate database from the database that we use for normal quotes. Instead of clicking “Display Product Comparison” on the Red Menu, there will be a new option called “Table Rating” which will display a new comparison window. At the top of that windows you will be able to select the table you want to quote.

Using the information from your Client Information screen, Table Rating will display a comparison of only those companies in the table ratings database. So far, we are prepping the following companies for the first release:

American General Life Insurance

Cincinnati Life Insurance Company

Guardian Life Insurance Company

Midland National Life Insurance Company

Minnesota Life Insurance Company

North American Co for Life and Health

Pacific Life Insurance Company

Protective Life and Annuity

Protective Life Insurance Company

Securian Life Insurance Company

Symetra Life Insurance Company

Transamerica Financial Life Insurance Co

Transamerica Life Insurance Company

United of Omaha Life Insurance Company

United States Life Insurance Company

The reason there are not more companies in this list, and the reason some obvious companies are missing, is because those companies have NOT yet responded to our requests for further information regarding their table ratings. If you have a favorite company that is not on the list, then please feel free to contact that company and let them know that you want to be able to quote their table ratings in Compulife.

 

Why A Separate Database?

Not only do different companies offer different tables, and use different table percentages, some have calculations that are much more complicated requring the use of rate tables that are different from their standard smoker and non-smoker rate tables.

In order to accomodate all these different variations the only solution was to have different tables set up for the quoting of table ratings. Without that there would be inaccuracies in the quotes and Compulife does not like inaccuracy. Further, we did not want those additional product entries and rates mixed in with the normal products which would only lead to user confusion.

Further, we may not get the cooperation of all companies for quoting table ratings and so it makes no sense to mix table ratings with normal product quotes. If a company is missing from the Table Rating option you can be certain that it is because we don’t have sufficient information about their table ratings.

Had table ratings been an option in the normal comparisons, then we would have the service headache of answering calls from customers wondering why the table ratings weren’t working for ABC Life Insurance Company’s products. You can correctly assume that if a company/product is NOT in the Table Rating option, it’s because we don’t have their information.

 

Compulife API Option

Work on the API option has been delayed by our work on the Compulife Batch Analyzer and Table Rating options. We felt from customer feedback that those options took priority over the API version.

We have also introduced additional security measures into our Internet Engine and some of those were in the Version 9 upgrade that we released in July. There will be additional security measures added to the engine in the next month or two and we will have more to say moving forward.

All of this to explain that all this work set back the completion of our new API option.

The API version will give customers all the flexibility of the Internet engine, to modify quotes and functions, but the quotes will be comping from Compulife’s server, not their own. The bad news is that autonomy will be lost but the good news is that Compulife will be maintaining the rate files and program updates so that customers can eliminate that maintenance requirement.

Security for the API will be handled by a database that will surround the quoting engine on the API server. Each request for a quote will be logged by customer ID and volume will be monitored. In fact, because we will be monitoring volume, the service will be priced on volume. The initial “all in” cost for the API will start as low as $396 per year. Prices will go up from there depending on volume of use. The highest volume API users can expect to pay about what the Internet engine costs now, with lower volume customers paying less. There’s a big difference between the “all in” cost of the engine now ($1,500 per year) and the new starting volume for the API engine costing only $396 per year.

Once the API is available, the price for the Internet engine will increase substantially. We will attempt to get as many Internet Engine customers switched to the API as possible. We think the price saving will move most Internet Engine customers to the API option. We will also be introducing new volume price discounts for the new engine, based upon submitted counter files showing lower volumes than permitted by the absolute maximum. There will be much more to tell internet engine users regarding counter files, but that is something we will roll out this fall.

There will be a definite cap on maximum API quotes available per month. If you go over that volume of quotes per month then you will need to move up to the Internet Engine. The main reason is that we don’t want large volumes dragging down the performance of our API server.

Do to the delays, w have decided to leave internet engine pricing alone until we have the API working. And we will need the API working before we put the final volume caps on the Internet Engine. Regardless, the Internet Engine cap will need to be in place by the end of January 2019. Once again, more about all of this will following in the next couple of months.