Meet the app that will make clients want to buy life insurance (really)

LHP: How do you collect client testimonials?

JR: Our new app is really a tool that we created for the agent, in order to collect the type of testimonials that are so important for building consumer trust in today's marketplace. I've worked with agents for 13 years now, and the biggest challenge I've seen them face is technology. They're too busy keeping up with product releases and other information that is critical to their business. With Agent Review, we decided to design an app that would empower agents.

Say you're in a client meeting where you have a chance to sell a product. With our app, at the end of the meeting, you can simply say, "Would you mind speaking into a camera for 15 seconds, sharing about your experience today?" With a smartphone, you open the camera in our app and take the recording right there. Once the video is shot, the client signs a digital permission form, you hit submit, and the whole thing automatically uploads to your profile. If your client doesn't feel comfortable speaking on camera, we also have a number of non-product specific, non-gender specific written proposals. The client can select the one that best fits their experience and, with client permission, that will also populate your profile page as a written testimonial.  

LHP: How does Agent Review make the buying process easier for consumers?

JR: What it does is make choosing the right agent easier. It helps consumers quickly find an agent that they at least connect with digitally; then hopefully when you meet them face-to-face it continues down that path. Our app provides insight into insurance agents that is otherwise hard to come by. It's nice to see where someone went to school, if they have a family, what sports they like, before you ever meet with them. You are predisposed to feel more comfortable working with that person if you have something in common.

LHP: Last year, Andreessen Horowitz named insurance one of the biggest tech trends to watch for, and Lemonade recently made waves with its $13M fundraise. Do you think institutional investors are more interested in investing in early stage insurance companies than they have been in the past? If so, why?

JR: I think it's a pretty solid market; the product's been around forever and a day. There are different segments, of course: You have products, you have support services such as ours, etc. We have a number of firms that have contacted us that don't necessarily want to come in and invest in a new insurance product. Instead, they're looking for ways to bring existing products to the consumer more efficiently, but not necessarily via direct-to-consumer distribution. Direct-to-consumer might work for auto insurance or for a small term plan, but anything more complex really requires agent involvement. As a consumer, you just don't get the information you need from a computer if you're looking for anything more complex than a very simple term plan.

LHP: What do you think is the No. 1 thing consumers want from an insurance purchase experience?

JR: Transparency, I think. That's what I'd want. Obviously, consumers want great products and great rates, but I think equally they want transparency from their agent and transparency from the company that's underwriting their product.

LHP: How do you think the insurance landscape will be different five or 10 years from now?

JR: I think it's just going to be more digital, more virtual. My experience in insurance has been primarily with long-term care insurance (LTCI). I was a young guy selling a product to an older market. Now, even with a product like LTCI, you have 40 percent of sales done over the phone via webinar to a senior client base.

Adaptability will also be increasingly important. The agents that connect with people at the time they want to connect, via a process they feel comfortable with, are the agents that will succeed. We're all 24-hour people these days. To stay competitive, I think flexibility is a huge thing that we need to bring to consumers.