Update News for March 2023

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

• • Accuracy Fanatics

  • How Accurate Are Other Quote Systems?

  • How Committed to Accuracy Are They?

  • YOU Can Help Us Do Our Job

  • The Tug of War to Get Rates

  • Our Current Programming Plans for 2023

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

Accuracy FanaticsDuring February I received this email about a mistake I made in our software:

I hope you’re doing well. I ran a batch of our own Classic Choice Term NY rates and one of our actuaries noticed that some of the premiums were incorrect for the 25-year term length, Male, Preferred best, Band 3 ($500k cells). I’ve attached a document that shows the scenarios in question. Column Q is what the premium should be. Do you know how this might’ve happened?

This was my response, sent less than an hour later:

• FIXED.

• It was human error – MINE.

I have updated all the servers. If you get the latest midmonth update, you will have the fix.

Nothing puts me into gear quicker than a report that there is an error in one of our quotes. Given the millions of numbers stored in our life company product database, I accept the fact that from time to time errors occur and I make a large percentage of those infrequent errors. That’s because I am the one that puts all those number in our database. But on that odd occasion when an error is reported, I move VERY fast to get it fixed.

Now I know most of the time our subscribers have little to say, unless they find an error, but we did get this unsolicited testimonial in February:

• Compulife is an excellent platform and I would call it a requirement for any independent agent that is serious and wants to keep the ability to quote, compare and share with prospects or even to add their website (with the add-on feature). What blows this out of the water in comparison to other tools that are out there is that these guys at CompuLife know exactly what they are doing and do everything in their power to make sure the library of carrier documents AND any updates in any of the product features are

accurate

 and presented. I had never had a misquote when the client was ready to apply which is a huge factor when it comes to client service. Jeremiah and the team at compulife have earned a lifetime client!

I have highlighted the word that stuck out for me. The word is “accurate”. I love it when people appreciate our accuracy. Unfortunately, most of the agents selling life insurance in the market it would appear that accuracy is not a high priority.

Why do I say that?

How Accurate Are Other Quote Systems?Over the years we have had many competitors come and go and we review competitors’ products from time to time. One of the things that always causes me to shake my head are sites with old, out-of-date or inaccurate premiums. Do agents even care? The truth for many, they don’t care. Their purpose in offering multi-company quotes is to lure in a prospect, and they’ll explain away the discrepancies if the prospect notices.

That’s especially true if agents can get those quotes for free. That is why NAAIP and David Rutstein were such a problem for us and why that legal battle continues. It’s bad enough when someone competes with you, it is another thing when someone steals your quoting system without paying for it, and then proceeds to give it away to thousands of agents who clearly DON’T care about the quality of what they are providing to their site’s visitors. In the case of NAAIP, the problem wasn’t the accuracy of the quotes when they took them, the problem was the accuracy over time as those quotes were not updated with changes in the market. And if you don’t know what I am talking about I would encourage you to visit:

How Committed to Accuracy Are They?But there are other competitors who have their own databases and there seem to be new competitors coming into the market all the time. I am quite certain that many view Compulife as making a small fortune (we aren’t) and that if they can do what we do can take away that business. There is a word for that, it’s called “capitalism” and that is a VERY good word. Capitalism means competition and competition keeps everyone on their toes. We have competed well for over 40 years and my goal is to keep doing what we do better, faster and more cost effectively.

But first and foremost our number one priority is for our database to be accurate and up-to-date. That’s job one. The second job is to find ways to keep our subscription prices highly competitive because agents will run for cheaper and many don’t care if the quotes they get are up-to-date or accurate. That’s personally very frustrating for me, but it’s a market reality and I would say the problem has only gotten worse as time moves on, and as we see a general decline in morals and ethics in our culture.

YOU Can Help Us Do Our JobOne of the calls I hate to get is from a subscriber who tells me they have encountered a number of errors in our program and they want me to look into this one example.

Folks! I want to hear from you the MINUTE you think that you have found an error in Compulife. I don’t want you to dismiss it, I want you to send us an email or call us immediately. In fact I so want you to report those issues that we routinely provide a 10% coupon toward your next annual subscription to the PC version of Compulife if you are the first to catch us in an error.

I gave away a 10% coupon this month to an agent who reported that one of the companies we quote had newer products. That company and its products were removed from our software. While that company does have a new product, they have NOT yet provided that information to us. I don’t keep around the old stuff even though it means removing the company.

The Tug of War to Get RatesI did receive an email from the company who said they would be happy to give us their rates if we agreed to give them the rates for all the other companies.

My response is that they could purchase our software, just like any other company can, and they can have access to quotes for all the other companies just like any other company can. BUT, and it is a BIG BUT, we NEVER give the rate material provided to us by life companies or by agents about life companies to ANYONE else. That information is treated as “TOP SECRET” and the ONLY way you can see what we have received is by running our software.

Companies routinely ask us to sign “non-disclosure” agreements which we never sign. Why? Because Compulife is ALL ABOUT disclosure. Our software takes the rate information and product information and let our subscribers produce quotes from it. The rate and product data is secure, as it is stored in encrypted files that even we ourselves don’t attempt to reverse engineer – there’s no point. We have data entry software that allow us access to that encrypted material and that data entry software is NEVER, and I mean NEVER given to anyone outside our company. In fact ere are only three members of our company who have access to that.

So what I tell a life company when they ask me to sign a non-disclosure agreement is that we never give their material to others, that the only access is through our software which we are happy to give them to review and inspect. We are also happy to demonstrate any feature they want to look at, including our new “Batch Analyzer” which we ONLY sell to life insurance companies or actuarial firms, an only after those customer sign a strict license agreement. If a company is NOT happy with us, there is NOTHING that requires them to give us their rates, and they are certainly not required to buy our software.

There is NO CHARGE for a life insurance company to have their products/rates in Compulife. We do ALL the work and they are not even required to buy our software.

FYI – to get a company’s product in Compulife, we need 4 things:

• 1. Electronic copies of rates (excel or pdf)

• 2. Product description (typically a copy of the product/rate guide)

• 3. State approvals

4. Preferred Health Criteria (this is optional)

If we get this information from an agent, and we assume that it is current, we’ll put it in whether it comes from the life company or not. Having said that, we always prefer to receive that information from the company directly and we prefer to work with the company to ensure their products are being quoted accurately (have I mentioned accuracy is important?).

To companies who are reluctant to give us their rates, I always ask “What part of free advertising do you not understand?” I will also typically say, “The agent can’t sell your product if the agent can’t quote your product”. Nevertheless some companies are VERY, VERY unwilling to let us have their rates. The funny story is that there are a couple of companies who buy our Batch Analyzer which is not cheap, $2,100 per year. One of the requirements for a life company to buy that is that they must provide us rates for their products. A couple of companies wanted the batch analyzer without providing rates, and so we agreed they could do that but the fee would double and be $4,200 per year instead. A couple of companies are paying that. It boggles my mind, but I like the extra money.

All of this to say, we do our level best to ensure that we get you all the companies and products that we can, and we try to make it as easy as possible to get that information directly from the companies.

Our Current Programming Plans for 2023The following is the current order for new work that we will be doing in 2023:

• • Introduction of New PC Version: CQS.EXE

• • Overhaul Of Current Product Data Files

• Introduction of Compulife Basic Plus (with Pick 12)

Anyone with questions about any of these upcoming projects can call Bob Barney to discuss:

Please don’t email me essay questions, just call. If I’m not in, email me your phone number, I’ll call you.

These planned objectives will easily consume our programming time during the balance of this year and throughout 2023. The good news is that once the product data files have been converted, and we have introduced the new CQS.EXE, and upgraded our internet engine to use the new data files, Compulife will be turning it’s full attention to our web based, Compulife Basic software. The long term goal is to have a web based product that does everything our PC based software does.