Liberty’s cutting edge technology maximises profits through convenience and simplicity

Liberty understands that time is money and that both clients and financial advisers want to minimise the time spent to get life and other risk cover. The administrative requirements around this type of business are often time consuming and tedious; instead of spending time on income generating activities, advisers often find themselves chasing up paper work and outstanding medical requirements. This frustrates advisers as they are unable to maximise their time and grow their business effectively.

This is why Liberty is in the process of re-engineering its entire risk assessment process to better service clients by dramatically improving turnaround times and to lessen the financial adviser’s administrative burden. Since the first improvements were made, there has already been a marked increase in the number of policies underwritten by the automated underwriting system. This statistic has increased to over 60% from 18% prior to the changes. In addition there has also been a reduction in NTU (not taken up) rates on business when a Liberty nurse collects the medical requirements and an increase in the productivity of advisers using the new tele-underwriting service.

“Already both clients and financial advisers are beginning to see the benefits of these changes” says Stuart Wenman, Managing Director for Technical Sales & Distribution at Liberty. Liberty has attempted to refine each point of contact with the financial adviser and client. This applies to everything from the booking of nurses to the increased levels of automated underwriting as well as the use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) by nurses and the collection of outstanding information through the call centre. Further innovation gives the financial adviser the advantage of immediate, ‘anywhere-anytime’ communication, as SMS, telephone and email are combined to keep the client, adviser and underwriter informed of each step in the process.This demonstrates how Liberty is enabling advisers to improve the way they do business.

“The investment in business technologies has removed time-consuming activities which in many instances impact on the financial advisers’ efficiency and overall performance. In the past it took up to two weeks to obtain underwriting requirements such as blood tests; this has now been reduced to a few hours,” says Wenman. “By reducing the administrative load, we’ve given back valuable time to the financial adviser to focus on what they do best – provide professional financial advice to their clients,” says Wenman. With this in mind the streamlined processes have been applied across the financial adviser space.

There is also a focus on the customer experience with customer satisfaction being a priority in every interaction. Customer feedback to date has been overwhelming, with random feedback requests suggesting that the process changes are working.

“While we still believe that there are many opportunities for further improvement, it has been pleasing to see the number of compliments being received from advisers and clients around the new services,” says Wenman. “However, we cannot relax now and are constantly looking for ways to innovate and improve the customer experience.”

Liberty will continue to use cutting-edge technology and simplified processes to ensure ongoing superior service levels to advisers and clients; all of which is intended to create convenience, quality and faster turnaround times.