New—Principal Business Solutions Enhanced Underwriting
Our recent announcement to focus individual life insurance sales on the business market is exciting to me personally. Shortly after joining Principal® in 1992, I started in an area called Business Market Services, a predecessor to our current Business Market Administration (BMA). I mention this to illustrate that a strategy focused on the business market isn’t new—we’ve had one for nearly my entire 29-year career. Now, with the decision to narrow our focus around the business market, it allows us to leverage robust existing capabilities and also create new opportunities and challenges for our underwriting team.
Building on existing underwriting capabilities
We offer many solutions for individuals being underwritten as part of business cases, including:
- Principal Accelerated UnderwritingSM (AU). Recent enhancements to the program have us well-positioned to help deliver a great underwriting experience for business cases with face amounts as high as $5 million, depending on the applicant age and business concept sale.
- Use of digital health data. Access to this data allows us to further leverage the annual medical exams many business executives complete to help underwrite them without an insurance exam.
- Financial underwriting expertise. We partner with our Business and Advanced Solutions team and use informal business valuations they’ve calculated to gain current and fair valuations of businesses and consider factors beyond income for key person coverage.
New program for larger cases
We recognize there’s a need to continue to find new ways to provide value and solutions to the market. I’m excited to introduce our new Principal® Business Solutions Enhanced Underwriting program. At a high level, the program is an extension of AU, designed to underwrite more individuals without insurance exams at higher face amounts. It’s our way of acknowledging that fully underwritten cases have the opportunity for a better customer experience, even at multi-million face amounts when the right information to comfortably assess the risk is available. We’ll leverage both digital health data and the traditional Attending Physician Statement (APS) for this program.
With the addition of the Business Solutions Enhanced Underwriting program, we’re able to offer underwriting solutions that can improve the experience of your clients across the broad spectrum of business solutions we offer—from a simple, two-person buy-sell arrangement with $1-2 million of coverage where AU will work—to a $20-30 million dollar policy for a business owner who wants to exit the business, have money for retirement, and ensure the legacy can continue after death. Whatever the solution needed, we want to be a part of it through our competitive underwriting capabilities.
As always, we’ll continue to work hard to earn your business. Stay well, and best wishes for a strong finish in 2021!