Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin: Merry Christmas…
U.S. Update News May 2005
The disk update will be processed Tuesday, May 31st and the disks will be shipped on that day. You should have the disk update by Thursday, June 2nd.
Here are the new listing rules based upon the subscription type:
1. Term4Sale – Agent edition
An individual subscribing to the lowest cost version of Compulife will continue to be entitled to one free listing at www.term4sale.com. There is no change for Term4Sale subscribers.
2. Personal Use subscription
An individual agent subscribing to the full version of the Compulife Quotation System will now be entitled to have two free listings at www.term4sale.com.
3. Agency Use subscription (Standard License)
Agency subscribers are now entitled to have up to three free listings at www.term4sale.com. There will still be the requirement that a single individual be listed as the contact person for the agency.
If you are a personal use or agency subscriber, and already have one free listing at www.term4sale.com, please send Diane an e-mail at dwelch@compulife.com indicating which other zip codes you would like to add. Alternately, you can give Diane a call at 800-798-3488 but Diane is likely to be busy with these requests during May. If you call don’t be surprised if she needs to make a note of your request and call you back later with the availability of the codes that you want; e-mail would be preferable. Please keep in mind that new listings requested during May will be posted on June 1st.
Most important, there will be a lower threshold to qualify for custom hosting. Custom hosting means that Compulife will cut the group of companies in our software to only those companies that the agency wants in the software. The group of companies will be locked so that the sub-users getting the agency’s custom hosted updates cannot reverse the process.
Please note that the bulk purchase discounts listed below, are ONLY available to those who are agency subscribers (standard license).
Term4Sale – Agent Edition
An agency subscriber can now purchase 10 copies of Term4Sale Agent Edition for only $500 (custom hosting is NOT available).
An agency subscriber can purchase 20 copies of Term4Sale Agent Edition for $990 and Compulife will “custom host” the monthly updates. Additional copies of the Term4Sale – Agent Edition are available at $49.50 per unit.
Personal Use – Edition
An agency subscriber can purchase 10 copies of the full Compulife program, personal use edition, for $990 (custom hosting is NOT available).
An agency subscriber can purchase 15 copies of the full Compulife program, personal use edition, for $1,485 and have the software “custom hosted” for their agents.
Additional copies of the Personal Use software are available at $99 per year. Please call for further discounts on volumes of 50 or more.
For example, if the agency buys 10 copies of Compulife’s Personal Use Edition, for $990, then the engine brings the total price to $1,490.
If an agency wants custom hosting of the Personal Use software, it must buy the minimum of 15 copies of Compulife’s Personal Use Edition for $1,485. If it does, the Internet engine can be added for $500 bringing the total cost to $1,985.
One of the advantages to those purchasing the Internet Engine is that they then have the same ability as Compulife’s Authorized web providers, which is to be able to hook up the engine for anyone else’s web site. Using the engine for other peoples’ web sites is available at NO ADDITIONAL COST; the only stipulation is that the person or entity is a Compulife subscriber.
For example, if you are a General Agency and you want to provide term quotes for your agents web sites, and you want to do that as part of your value added services to those agencies, you can do so at NO CHARGE providing the agent is a subscriber to Compulife. When you combine that NO CHARGE opportunity, with the fact that an agency can buy Compulife for its agents for as little as $99 per year, we can only wonder why more agencies are not taking advantage of the opportunity to provide these valuable tools to their agents.
During April Compulife removed the opportunity for NEW subscribers to purchase updates on disks. The only disks we are now shipping are those to existing subscribers who still get their updates by disks.
However, effective July 1, 2005, EXISTING customers will be faced with higher prices and new conditions when they renew their subscription for updates on disks. If you are getting disk updates, and want to hold off on switching to updates by Internet, you need to read this carefully.
First, renewal prices for disks will increase. To ensure that all disk update customers stop receiving disk updates after December 2006, all disk update customers renewing after July 1, 2005 will be invoiced for the total number of months left to December 2006. This will ensure that each disk subscription is paid to the end of 2006. It will not be renewed past that point as a disk subscription.
From July 1, 2005 forward, personal use disk subscription renewals will be priced at $29 per month, payable in a lump sum to the end of December 2006.
Agency use disk subscriptions will be $39 per month, payable in a lump sum in advance to the end of December 2006.
VERY IMPORTANT: The absolute last date anyone will be able to obtain a monthly update by disk will be December 2006. From January 2007 and forward, ALL Compulife subscribers will need to receive updates by Internet. If you are not connected to the Internet by January 2007, you will no longer be able to get Compulife updates.
If you act before July 1, 2005, the cost of your renewal will be based upon the total number of months left times the average cost per month based upon the current annual fees of:
Personal Use – $25 per month (rather than $29)
Agency Use – $33.25 per month (rather than $39)
If you wait until AFTER July 1, 2005 to renew disk updates, you will pay the higher prices.
Previously our practice was to take products that have fractional pennies in their rates per thousand and round the rates up to the next whole cent. This made our quotes fractionally higher than they should be.
IMPORTANT: Once again, this change requires a New Internet Engine for those who use the Internet engine.
This change will require a minor data conversion which will necessitate a change to the data structure. This means that the new data is NOT compatible with old data. While this will not be a problem for customers who subscribe to our software, because the new program and data will be introduced at the same time, it does create a problem for those who use the internet engine.
Therefore, if you are using Compulife’s Internet engine, you will need to be ready to replace the engine with the new engine once the new data has been introduced. Due to the significance of the changeover, and the fact that everything will need to be implemented and tested before release, we are planning to make this change in May.
Therefore, if you are a current engine user it would be a good idea to make a note to contact Compulife to ensure you get an updated version of the engine. If you are NOT a current engine user, but still using the engine, then you should be aware that May’s midmonth updates will create errors in your quotes.
IMPORTANT: This Data Modification IS NOT AVAILABLE in DOS
If a product requires only two decimal storage, then the DOS program will still be able to quote it. However, if the multiple decimal data storage option has been implemented for a product, the DOS version will skip over that product and the product will NOT be quoted.
Here is the run down on our ideas to enhance U/L quotes in Compulife.
First, Compulife is not planning to add U/L comparisons to our software. We already have the U/L comparisons that we want to have. You will find those products in the comparison category called
Providing that a U/L product has a fully guaranteed premium that will not lapse before age 100 (some guarantee premium and face amount longer), the product can be included in that category. As always is the case, we want to include every product that we can.
The NEW PROPOSAL that I talked about last month adds nothing new to that comparison within the Compulife program.
Next, if the company has worked with Compulife in order to facilitate the new feature that we are PROPOSING, there would be a NEW BUTTON on the single product display window. Currently you have a button called “Rate Class”. Imagine a NEW button just to the left of it called “Illustrate”. If you were to click on this imaginary new “Illustrate” button our software would then connect you to the Home Office software, passing into the Home Office software the client’s information and displaying a genuine Home Office illustration for the exact same product with no lapse option that you were looking at in Compulife.
Again, this is NOT a new comparison feature. This would be a proposed new interface between our software and the company software. It would make it much easier to use the company software to generate a genuine life company illustration for the product you saw in Compulife.
Given the completion of that work, we are now confident that the Windows program is able to do ALL things which the DOS program was able to do and, of course, the Windows version is able to do MUCH MORE than the DOS program was ever capable of doing.
Therefore, this is a LAST CALL for subscribers to advise us if there are things that they use the DOS program for, which they can’t use the Windows program to do. Effective with the beginning of the 3rd quarter (July Update) we will be deleting the DOS program from our updates. The way it will work is that when you double click on the DOS icon to run the DOS program, it will simply start the windows software. That will no doubt provoke a reaction from those who don’t read our bulletins but once we have worked through transition problems arising from that unhappy experience (for some), we will permanently say good-bye to the DOS software.
For those doing monthly updates by Internet, we rely on three other web sites to supply monthly updates. These are automatically checked and used by our automatic Internet update software.
1. Switch to obtaining monthly updates by Internet.
Not only will you eliminate the expense and hassle of returning disks, you will save $100 per year in subscription fees.
To switch to Internet monthly updates, go to our web page www.compulife.com and select the last menu choice “Forms, applications, instruction tutorials, etc.” Under the section “License Agreements” you will need to select and complete a new License Agreement for the type of license you have. After you have printed the new agreement, please read it, especially the part where you agree that you have successfully downloaded and processed our “mid-month updates”. If you haven’t done that before, call us and we’ll be happy to step you through the procedure. It’s easy.
2. Disk Purchase Program
The other way to avoid returning the disks and the disk box each month is to pre-purchase them for $21 per year ($1.75 per month). Once you do that you can keep them for future reference, throw them away or return them for a credit (once each year) when you are invoiced for the following year. $21 costs you less than mailing back disks each month.