From The Desk Of Pat Wedeking
Hello Friends,
So here we are at the heart of the most productive time all
year for many life insurance producers. First of the year is behind us, Summer
time is well off in the future and we are ready to produce! Thank you for
choosing Only Financial Group. We’re working everyday to earn all of your
business and for those that send it all through your OFG contracts, we know who
you are and appreciate the trust you’ve put in us.
Excitement is the tone around OFG right now. Many are
experiencing favorable results as “Digital Agents” selling large volumes of term
life insurance without leaving their desk. This is where we will maintain our
focus as we grow into a full service life and annuity brokerage.
With the best impaired risk solution in the business along
with the knowledge, access to products and top compensation necessary to compete
with permanent insurance, annuities and disability income insurance, we are
ready to serve you on all the business you do.
Direct response life insurance sales are growing and thanks
to you OFG is out front. We like to avoid the “Bleeding Edge” and at the same
time stay consistently ahead of the curve. This month we will roll out a
digital signature process with some of our top carriers; LeadBoss has
advanced to a point where we’d match it with anything on the street and feel
confident about how it stacks up. To be certain, it’s the best tool in the
industry for the purpose for which it was designed. You just gotta learn more
about it and put it to use.
We’ve rolled out an exciting agent website program
so that producers everywhere can gain instant credibility, have inquiries flow
directly into LeadBoss accounts for life insurance, long term care, disability
insurance and annuities. We’re adding home, auto and health insurance links to
pass to an established fulfillment center that pays you a referral fee creating
multiple sources of income for today’s insurance professional.
Read the Rest of this Article....
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Watch Your Customers APR
By
Karl S.
Have you ever sat down with
your trusty business calculator to compute the APR customers pay when they pay
other than annually for their term insurance? Its a real eye opener. First
Colony Life (FCL) publishes their APR in their rate card. FCL's monthly modal
factor is .0875 which corresponds to a 10.8% APR. Their Quarterly factor of
0.26 corresponds to 10.8% APR as well. Their semi-annual factor of 0.51
computes to 8.2% APR. The APR's for several of our other favorite companies are
listed in the chart below. Having these APR's handy can help you when you sell
an annual premium to your customers.
Many agents point out that if
you take 0.51 and multiply it by 2 you get 1.02 so the customer is paying 2%
more than the annual premium. That is an accurate observation, however the
corresponding APR is much higher because half the charge was collected with the
initial payment and the second charge was collected just six months into the
year, so the insurance company got their extra charge well in advance, which
corresponds to a much higher rate of interest than simply computing how many
extra dollars were paid by the end of the year.
Since the modal factor is
commissionable you actually earn that APR when you sell an “other than annual”
case. However, with up front lead costs, the ordinary costs of running your
business and the time value of the dollar, revenue earned now because of annual
payment is worth more than 10.8% collected throughout the year. From the
carrier’s perspective remember this also, as a result of this “APR affect” it
doesn't cost the carriers anything to annualize commissions. They make more
than their cost of money on the modal factor!
Click Here to Read the Full Version....
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Brad's Bits
The Ghost of Triple-X Past?
Much has been said
about Triple-X. This was regulatory change adopted by each state
through the efforts of the NAIC. These changes that became effective
January 1, 2000 created a firestorm of controversy. Debates have
continued since this new law went into affect about who really benefits
from it, the consumer or the insurance carriers.
The regulation change
was spurred by the term wars of the last few years and the carrier
insolvencies of the late 1990s. Carriers cut rates in an effort to
become competitive. Their ration for cutting rates was that by gaining
market share their profitability in the future would more than offset
any potential loss on the front end due to artificially low rates. The
policies in question were guaranteed level term contracts. Right or
wrong, the NAIC rationed that without the ability to increase rates, as
these contracts offered a warranty against that happening, carriers in
their future years not realizing projected market dominance would become
insolvent and fall into receivership.
To battle this
potential event the NAIC mandated that insurance companies carry
additional reserves for any contracts that guaranteed rates beyond 5
years. While under the guise of protecting the consumer with these
changes, many felt that this would do nothing more than shift the risk
of coverage (i.e. cost) squarely to the consumer. They would either pay
more in premiums for the guaranteed rate product or take the cheaper
non-guaranteed version and assume the risk of potential rate hikes later
on. The good news is this played out pretty much the way the whole Y2K
event unfolded, a huge buildup of concern and then a silent non-event.
A few carriers took immediate action and had significant rate hikes, but
on the whole, pricing has remained competitive and in some instances has
come down.
Click Here to Read the Full Version...
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Greatest Hits Archive
Notes from a Rookie
By Travis Phillips
Background
About 14 months
ago I knew that I was going to have to move to San Francisco, find a new job, or
scarier yet, a new career. I was working for one of the most successful
Internet companies in the world and we were in trouble – as good a niche as we
had, we were bleeding and I saw the writing on the wall. My best chance to stay
with this company was to move to San Francisco - I wasn’t willing to do that and
I knew, even if I did move, that my chances of having a job with them six months
out was slim.
So, what next?
At the time I had a 2-year-old child and my wife was eight-and-a half months
pregnant with our second.
I had helped a
friend of mine start this neat little company a few years back called
InsuranceOnly.com – I was mostly an investor with some strategic planning but I
had been keeping my eye on things. I saw that they were doing really well
selling life insurance leads to agents and that intrigued me. Upon further
analysis, I realized that if you had the patience, the real money was actually
in selling the insurance, not the lead. I have always been
entrepreneurial, but I hadn’t been an entrepreneur – do I finally roll the dice
or do I go back to working for someone else?
What did I do?...
Click Here to Read the Full Version...
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LeadBoss Q&A
What Is LeadBoss?
Click Here For More Info
Q: What is the difference between “Event Email” templates
and “Manual Email” templates?
A:
Event Email templates are those templates you setup for the system to
automatically email to the prospect/client based on a particular status which
has been set in LeadBoss. These emails will be sent per rules which you have
full control over. I have included instructions on how to setup event email
templates and rules below.
Manual
Email templates are those templates which you will manually email to the client.
Thus, if you have an annuity email template setup and you do a search for all
those clients who are age 50+, you could then select your annuity template to
send to ALL these particular leads/clients.
Q: How do I use the search to find leads I want to
manually email?
A:
1) Click
on the “Search” button at the left side of the screen
2) Once
at the Search screen, enter the search parameter or parameters for which you
would like to search (ex. If you want to find all those leads which are
“Clients” AND age 50 or older, select “Client” from the “Lead Status” drop down
then enter “50” in the FIRST “age” field (if you enter an additional age in the
second field the system will search for a range of ages – ex. Age 50 to 70.)
3) Click
Search. You will now be at the search results screen
4) In
order to work with a lead, you need to add it to your “basket”. You can do this
in 3 ways:
a. One
lead at a time - Check the box for the particular lead or leads that you want to
work with and then click “Update Basket”
b. All
leads on a PAGE - Click the button “Check All” at the bottom of the screen and
then click “Update Basket”
c. All
leads found (more than one page) - Click the button “Add All To Basket”; you
will not need to click “Update Basket” as you have already added the leads to
your basket
5) once
you have added the leads to your basket, you will see a small drop down box at
the bottom of the screen. Select “Email” and click “Go”.
6)
You should now be at the emailing screen.
7) On
this screen you can select the template you want to send. Once this template is
selected you can choose to modify it as necessary. You can also choose to be
cc’d in on the email.
8) The
last step is to simply send the email.
Thus,
using the search and emailing function makes it VERY easy to send a targeted
email to many leads at once!
NOTE: Be
sure that if you select “Use Signature” that you then you DO NOT enter a
signature in the text box – the signature will be added for you when the email
is SENT. |
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Click Above to Listen
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Why attend the OFG Sales Summit?
Click Above to Listen
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"Getting to Know Each Other"
Each month we will profile different members of the OFG Team. This month, please click on the link below to....
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Sales Corner
Improve Your Impaired Risk Conversions
In dealing with your impaired
risk cases, it's vital that you "drill down" and obtain ALL the information
about past or current illnesses. Applicants don't understand that if they
withhold information they'll likely be declined out right when they could have
obtained coverage by providing all details of their health condition. It's
crucial that you ask the question below.
Final Added
Question:
We have completed the medical portion of the application. Is there any
additional information that you can provide me? Have you had at any point in
your life another type of medical treatment, diagnosis, prognosis, or study
that has not been mentioned in this application? Are you currently
experiencing any conditions or symptoms that have not been treated by a doctor
yet?
Disclosure…after
the complete application and Final Question has been asked:
Now that we have completed that application I will submit the information to
the insurance carrier. They will be checking all medical records, applicable
public records, and the Medical Information Bureau to review all of the
submitted information. These resources will have your medical track record and
a history of all your medical and insurance transactions. If for any reason
the carrier finds information from these resources that has not been disclosed
on the application, you will likely be declined for insurance. This will then
have an effect on future insurability. At this time can you think of any
additional information that has not been disclosed on the application?
(NO)
– Great, I will be submitting the application today. (confirm physical exam
information based on carrier). You will be contacted by the carrier and our
office to complete a phone interview and to keep you informed as the process
moves along.
(YES)
– What information can you provide? (take information, readjust premiums,
carrier, etc….then move to close the call once all adjustments have been
made).
-Greg Hellmich
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Document Share
Each month we will post useful
documents for everyone to share. This month we offer the
Family History Cheat Sheet
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Please Join Us
For Our Biweekly Teleconference's
iShare
A
monthly teleconference of the nations top producers in the Direct Response
Market.
Next Teleconference
Thursday
March 10th
at 12:00 PST
iForum
"Engineered To Make You Money"
A
monthly teleconference of vendors, carriers and the nations top producers in
the Direct Response Market
Next Teleconference
Thursday
March 24th
at 12:00
PST
Open to all
Only Financial Group vendors and agents.
For those
wishing to sit in, contact Brad from OFG at:
reminder emails will be sent
with access number
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Impaired
Risk through
OFG
Easy as
ABC, 123
Has your client been Declined, Postponed, Rated or Refused?
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OFG Press Releases
Take a moment to read
through our press releases, and to learn more about our exciting
services and products which will increase your bottom line!
Press Release Archive |
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