Articles Archive

Large & Small Companies
Alike Benefit from Using IBU
APS Summary Service

In 2006, the IBU APS Summary service was a major growth area for our company as more and more home office departments discovered the value and benefits we have to offer.

Large and small companies alike are finding our APS Summary service to be a perfect solution to achieve cost savings and at the same time maintain time service objectives.

Using online technologies IBU has perfected a seamless system to provide APS Summaries to home office underwriting departments. In many cases the process works by having IBU underwriters view the APS on the APS vendor’s web site and complete a summary using IBU web-based technology. In other cases, underwriting departments utilize secure electronic file transfer with IBU’s uploading tool.

IBU APS Summaries allow underwriting departments to outsource the “grunt work” of reading APS’s. “I never touch a piece of paper,” says IBU Underwriter Lynn Driest. “This is quite a change from the Home Office where countless hours are spent pouring over paper APS’s.”

“Our solution is attractive to two kinds of customers,” says Lincoln Tedeschi, IBU president. “Smaller companies who to can't, or would rather not, hire experienced underwriters, and large companies with unmanageable high volume periods.”

For large companies, application counts can have peaks and valleys that make staffing an underwriting department challenging to say the least. Hiring underwriters is not always easy and the cost of contract underwriters is prohibitively expensive because of ancillary costs such as travel and lodging. In addition, the increased prevalence of trial and informal applications can be a big headache for many VP’s of underwriting.

Staffing issues present similar challenges for small companies, but for different reasons. While smaller companies need the help only experienced underwriters can provide, they may not need to hire a whole underwriter‚ with all the associated salary and benefit costs. “With IBU, these companies are able to engage exactly the amount of underwriting necessary and focus the underwriting expense directly on the APS, which is where it is needed the most,” says Tedeschi.

To make the IBU APS Summary service even more beneficial for clients, it has evolved to include not only reviewing APS’s but also providing a decision. Adding decisions frees up even more underwriting capacity for the underwriting departments of IBU clients.

IBU clients have found that by using the APS summary service, they can get all or some of their APS’s summarized at an hourly rate that is 20% to 25% less than the hourly rates of contract underwriters. Some of the companies using the IBU APS summary service include smaller companies such as American Income Life, Chesapeake Life, and Tennessee Farmers Life. Larger companies using the service include Jefferson Pilot Life, and AIG and AEGON.