When asked about the experience they want to provide their clients, most financial advisors will tell you they want to serve their clients' needs through comprehensive planning, personal relationships, and honoring their role as a fiduciary. Protecting a client's lifestyle, assets, and legacy is an important part of that process.
In serving the risk management needs of clients, the life insurance case manager is an essential partner to financial advisors.
Case managers, whether employed in a local independent firm or at a home office, help advisors gain efficiency, scale, and guidance in the risk management process.
Case managers help financial advisors objectively shop the insurance marketplace and steer a client's needs towards the most advantageous underwriting offer or carrier.
Why Use a Case Manager?
Although some financial advisors and professionals could go directly to an insurance carrier to place business, many choose to work with a brokerage general agency (BGA). Working with a BGA, advisors gain efficiency by leaning on the objective and unbiased expertise and consulting brokerage firms provide. BGAs do not have proprietary obligations to a particular insurance carrier; instead, they represent the marketplace. Like other insurance operations, BGA case managers oversee all aspects of the case and navigate different requirements across different carriers to help ensure a case is placed.
As a critical link between financial advisors, clients, insurance companies, and other parties involved in the case management process, the life insurance case manager is instrumental. With client applications requiring more data and involvement in recent years, advisors need knowledgeable professionals they can turn to.
While marketing and business development may be what initially encourages financial advisors to engage with a brokerage firm, the case manager and operations team keep advisors happy and push things over the finish line to deliver on the advisor's value proposition.
The case management team makes certain that the business brought in gets pushed through at the carrier level as expeditiously as possible. The quicker a BGA can process business, the more likely advisors and financial professionals will be to use that firm again. In addition, case management is vital to continuing the relationship-building process between advisors and their clients.
To process and place life insurance cases in the most effective, accurate, and efficient way possible, case managers must ensure life insurance applications are submitted in good order with a thorough assessment of initial field underwriting risks. By triaging and steering a case at every stage, the case manager can catch potential submission issues early and reduce unnecessary bumps in the road.
