This paper aims to provide what underwriters and claims examiners need to know about this ever-expanding aggregation of synthetic drugs that are luring users with their enhanced Cannabis-like effects.

by Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI

When life insurers set their underwriting requirement practices, the primary focus has always been on protective value (cost vs. benefit). In many smaller companies lacking the resources to conduct internal studies, the usual approach is to consider the practices of larger carriers and most notably those known to routinely do such studies.

Thanks to On The Risk for allowing us to reprint this article from the June 2012 issue.

Underwriter audits are indispensable resources for chief underwriters. While not the only basis for assessing performance, they are the single most significant benchmark where line underwriters are concerned. It would be essentially impossible to manage underwriters without having sufficient insight into their performance on the job.

by Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI

These are the lecture slides from Hank's presentation - Underwriting Plain Talk - at the Central Illinois Home Office Underwriters Association at their March 8 dinner meeting.

Teleinterview drilldown questionnaire for childhood cancer survivors written by Hank and free to all registered InsureIntell members.

Sue Nelson & Kathy Thomas, Co-Vice Chairpersons

This year’s LOMA Health Underwriting Study Group Meeting (HUSG) was held in San Antonio, Texas, on the lovely Riverwalk.

More than 100 members attended this 2 ½ day event, representing 40 Individual and Small Group carriers. About half of the meeting was spent in roundtable discussion of underwriting and other risk management issues and half the meeting was devoted to presentations.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
April, 2010

The three most prevalent chronic pain syndromes are:

• Temporomandibular joint disease (TMD) presenting as chronic myofascial pain
• Chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS)
• Fibromyalgia (FM)

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
On The Risk • Vol.24 N.4 2008

Executive Summary

This essay is one underwriter’s observations regarding aspects of the Association of Home Office Underwriters (AHOU) which may be deemed worthy of rethinking and, if so, perhaps modifying on some basis, now or in the future. A wide range of topics is discussed, with the sole purpose being to offer up thoughts for consideration by AHOU members. The author hopes what is said here will be received in the spirit intended.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
Best's Review • November, 2009

Unlike “Terminator” movies, the machines in question here are the so-called “underwriting engines.” These “straight-through processors” have been around for years. Yet despite smashing success in the United Kingdom and other markets, they have languished in North America.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI

There was a posting recently at lifeunderwriting.com wherein the underwriter bemoaned the fact that his company would not fund his enrollment, and that of his peers in the department, in the State of the Art™ Continuing Education Program.

This is a classic case of missing the forest for the trees, as they say. And not just because it happens to focus on the education program into which I and my colleagues at SelectX-UK have invested so much of our energy and devotion.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI

For much of this underwriter’s 30 years of practice, he had to endure being denounced as head of “the sales prevention department” by angry producers who tired of waiting weeks (if not months) for a “thumbs up” on new business.

Those days will soon be gone…forever.

Gone, that is, if life insurers take the plunge and embrace a new model for risk appraisal that radically transforms the process.

The model is known as TELEUNDERWRITING.

The word "flummoxed" best defines the intellectual consequences of trying to fathom how life insurance distribution via banks can thrive globally, but flounder here.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
December, 2008

Before I delve into this essay, four observations are necessary for perspective.

My apologies to the spirit of Ray Bradbury for appropriating the title of one of his many stellar works of fiction (more than a few of which I confess to having devoured in my youth).

I put quotation marks around “wicked” to emphasize that this loaded word is being used strictly in the figurative sense. I imply no personal criticism of those who may advocate the practice about to be described. The practice itself, on the other hand, has odious implications which, if only in my view, need to be aired out and further debated lest they be embraced prematurely in risk appraisal.

I put a question mark at the end of the title because the status of the matter at issue remains uncertain. Is it already here? Should we expect its landfall soon? Or, does it remain purely theoretical at this writing?

Because of the importance of addressing this phenomenon early on, it is necessary to work off of a number of assumptions. If, as it turns out, some of these assumptions are in error, then perhaps at least a portion of the concern expressed here will be mitigated accordingly.

Hank George FALU, FLMI, CLU
September 2008
Best's Review

It is said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. In the spirit of this truism, a specter looming in underwriting is in dire need of sobering historical perspective.

Once upon a time, a cancer marker that showed initial promise was embraced for use in insurance screening by a prominent carrier.

Not for long.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
August, 2008

“…every dollar spent on training and development per employee results in an increase of $168 in revenue per employee.”

Jennifer C. Rankin
LOMA Resource magazine
June, 2008:16

The issue of underwriter education has had a renaissance of sorts since the tedious years of the 1990s. Over that interval, this subject was all but anathema, given the priorities and realities of those times.

Not any more.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
January, 2008 • Teleunderwrtiting Essay 12

Introduction

In this final essay in our teleunderwriting series, we will focus on how insurers can capitalize on the introduction of teleunderwriting to make important changes in underwriting practices. It is imperative that insurers use this window of opportunity wisely for two reasons:

1. It is open to you by virtue of the huge positive impact teleunderwriting will have on turnaround time for your sales force. They will be excited about this and other payoffs to them from this new process and you can leverage this to your advantage.
2. Almost every company in the industry has changes that need to be made regarding requirements and other practices which harmonize with teleunderwriting and/or bring advantages in other ways. Making them invariably means treading lightly. Perhaps less so in this context than at any other point.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
November, 2007 • Teleunderwrtiting Essay 10

Characteristics of Survey Respondents' Companies

We have just completed a survey of 18 American life companies currently engaged in teleunderwriting. The findings should be of interest to all life and health insurers using or considering teleunderwriting. Therefore, this essay will review the results of that survey, with added commentary…as readers have no doubt come to expect from this underwriter!

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
September, 2007 • Teleunderwrtiting Essay 8

What do we mean by “triage?”

In clinical medicine, triage is the process by which patients – typically in emergency care settings – are divided into groups based on the urgency of their need for treatment. For example, if you have a bad cold and I have a bleeding head wound…and we both arrive at the E.R. at the same time, you will be watching TV (bored out of your mind) while I am treated first.

Triage is also a fact of life in underwriting, but in a different way.

In all modes of underwriting, we reach several points in the appraisal process where we may be positioned to make the fundamental triage decision: can I take action with what I have or do I need more information?

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
July, 2007 • Teleunderwrtiting Essay 6

Introduction

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
May, 2007 • Teleunderwrtiting Essay 4

I have decided to scrap the topic for July: Demythologizing the Three W’s of Teleunderwriting, and incorporate that message in this essay.

Accordingly, I have added a new essay topic, moving the others up one month and then inserting the new topic for November.

The new topic is Risk Screening in the Age of Teleunderwriting.

Why this?

Because of what I saw on the 135-company life underwriting requirements survey my company just completed.

Clearly, there needs to be a strong message sent here: it makes no sense to use 20th century underwriting resources in a 21st century teleunderwriting underwriting environment.

That shouted, now essay #4.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
March, 2007 • Teleunderwriting Essay 2

“It all started in a little 5,000 watt station in Fresno.”

- Ted Baxter

For those of you who remember the Mary Tyler Moore TV show from the 1970s, the name Ted Baxter should recall to mind that pompous evening news anchorman who was forever incurring the wrath of station manager Lou Grant!

Best as this underwriter can determine, teleunderwriting – unlike Ted’s mythical career as a bumbling TV personality – did not begin in a radio station or in Fresno, California…nor did Ted have anything to do with it (which is just as well for the sake of this incredible process which is changing the face of mortality and morbidity risk assessment forever!).

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
Roche • 2007

Executive Summary

Circulatory disease is the #1 cause of excess mortality and morbidity in industrialized nations, worldwide. Thus, life and health insurers place their underwriting emphasis in this domain of risk.

Currently, most insurers continue to rely on screening and reflexive tests that are inferior to more modern alternatives. As the industry continues to sort its priorities and identify itself within the realm of “financial services,” the need for significant – and now readily feasible – changes in this regard becomes clear.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
The National Underwriter • July 2005

Preface

This is a message for all senior executives, chief marketing officers, sales VPs, agency managers, brokers and agents on the subject of teleunderwriting. Those who take a few moments to read it will be empowered to change their companies in ways that are certain to pay back handsomely, both immediately and in the years ahead.

At the last meeting of the Underwriting Vision Group, this underwriter, as founder and chair, asked one of the members to “describe the impact teleunderwriting has had on your company.”

His response?

“WONDERFUL!! WONDERFUL!!”

The respondent is VP of Underwriting at a prominent life insurer. He is one of a dozen who serve on this issue-focused underwriting discussion group.

We know from this exclamation and also from countless statements by new business executives that teleunderwriting has been the greatest innovation in the history of life and health underwriting.

This essay is directed at answering one imperative question that is seldom asked and rarely comment upon: what are the implications of teleunderwriting for producers?

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI

An insidious crisis is quietly jeopardizing the future of life and health insurance.

We are permitting ourselves to "dumb down" as regards prowess and savvy in the art and science of risk selection.

On visible aspect of this has been intensive cost-cutting efforts of recent vintage. CFOs have been quick to cut "non-essential" travel, as well as spending for educational purposes. While everyone appreciates the need for prudent spending, these well-intentioned individuals are simply "picking off the low-hanging fruit." By doing so, they are unwittingly closing off essential avenues to maintaining technical proficiency. Sacrificing access to vital knowledge in these times of great and rapid change is the quintessence of penny-wise/pound-foolish thinking.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
Best's Review • November 2003

Hank George FALU, CLU, FLMI
Broker World • April 2003

“…many adults currently choose CAM therapies to treat their most serious medical problems.”

David M. Eisenberg, MD,
Harvard University
Annals of Internal Medicine
135(2001):344

CAM is the new acronym for complementary and alternative medicine. Which, in turn, speaks to a broad array of therapeutic interventions—some ancient, others ultra-modern—standing at the gates of conventional medicine and finally being heard, as in:

• Increasing the prevalence of their collective use by 25 percent in the final decade of the previous century.
• Escalating the number of visits to their sundry practitioners over the same interval from 427 million to 629 million (an imposing number challenging primary care medicine).
• Jacking up net expenditures for their goods and services by a staggering 45 percent to a total of $21 billion and climbing.

Hank George, FALU, CLU, FLMI
Best's Review • March 2003

Hank George FALU, CLU, FLMI
Broker World, August 2002

“How many of you know what critical illness insurance is?” A scattering of hands, slowly ascending, as if to say,

“Well, maybe…a little.”

My next question, “What would you say if I told you it was destined for stardom? To be America’s next big insurance product?” A wall of silence, less disconcerting only for the generalized non-defensive body language! Like I said, this essay is just a bit overdue.