Jeff Root: Hey life insurance agents, you’re listening to the Modern Life Insurance Selling podcast where we provide the tools to help you grow a more profitable life insurance business by selling online and over the phone from anywhere with an internet connection, even if you’re alone in your quest to build your life insurance business, just know that there’s a community of life insurance agents at SellTermLife.com connecting and helping each other grow their businesses from home offices, coffee shops, and beaches all across the nation.

Welcome to episode number 39 of the Modern Life Insurance Selling podcast. I’m your host Jeff Root, and today we’ll be speaking with an underwriter from a life insurance company who will remain nameless. I thought it’d be a cool episode to do a Q and A with an underwriter without giving away the company name or the underwriter’s identity so he can be as candid as possible with us in his answers. Hopefully, this episode will give you a better understanding of underwriting and of underwriters in general.

We’ll talk about stuff like how to become an underwriter, typical caseloads, how many cases they’re working on at a single time. What they’re evaluated on, and we’ll also ask questions our community came up with as well, but first, like always, if you like what you hear and are listening in iTunes or Stitcher, please leave us a review. Also, if you have any questions or would like a topic covered on the podcast, please use the send voice mail tab over at SellTermLife.com. All right. This is going to be a straight Q and A, so let’s get to it. All right, welcome to the podcast.

Underwriter: Thank you.

Jeff Root: I usually start with an introduction of sorts, but we’ll keep this interview anonymous, so let’s just start with what it takes to become an underwriter. Is there any schooling for what you do? What’s the typical path an underwriter takes?

Underwriter: It’s all over the place. We’ve had people who do the more conventional, finance, e-con majors, we get BATs, business majors of all stripes. You also get people who might have been former nurses who just got sick of the hours. I think someone I work with is also a pharmacist. They just got tired of that whole gig. It’s all over the place. We have people who used to work with field reps as assistance reps, stuff like that. It’s a wide and varied range. You don’t know from person-to-person what you’re getting.

Jeff Root: Okay. Is it typical a more analytical person who pursues underwriting or is there a typical type of person you see that becomes an underwriter?

Underwriter: Yeah, they’re big on the whole analytical, time management side. That’s what they’re like. I’ve always felt that they should pursue the kind of agent [versus 00:02:37 ] work in the field more because one of the big things you get at the end of every case is that you have to sell the rating to the field. That’s kind of a problem if you don’t have any experience with selling yourself.

Jeff Root: Is your position tied to how many cases get placed?

Underwriter: Not placement necessarily. We usually use it by how many cases are either approved, declined, so how many you’ve taken your last action on.

Jeff Root: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Underwriter: That’s one of the bigger things, so it’s not necessarily placement. They can’t always track those because sometimes commissions are paid all year long it’s done suit your [tail 00:03:12 ].

Jeff Root: Yeah.

Underwriter: It might be placed for a year, and then all of the sudden they drop off, or it might be 6 months and they’re gone.

Jeff Root: Okay. How are underwriters evaluated in their jobs?

Underwriter: It depends on the company. You could be based on a number of cases you approve or decline every month. Certainly, there’s an element of accuracy. That’s a tough one, though, because if you do audits, you get a ten-case, twenty-case audit, however many you care to. That means you have to pull somebody else out of production, so that’s someone else not doing work and having to go over your cases. They like to keep track of agent satisfaction on this. It’s a big key for them. If they’re consistently getting calls about your ratings, your decisions and the time you’re taking on cases that’s a giant problem. If you’re taking two weeks to go over a set of records that’s not really that complicated, then, yeah.

Jeff Root: You’re caught. Okay.

Underwriter: It’s going to be an issue for you.

Jeff Root: Yeah. Okay. What is an underwriter’s usual case load?

Underwriter: That’s going to be carrier-dependent. I know for us they usually wanted to keep us around about 80 to 95, but with end-of-the-year and they’re trying some new things with my specific work place I’ve seen people around 150 and some approaching 200. Yeah, it’s all over the place. Some carriers don’t mind if you go a little bit higher if you have lower amounts because you’re not waiting for as many requirements. Some carriers if you have to wait for those higher dollar amounts and higher requirements they don’t want you going above 100.

Jeff Root: Okay. Are you supposed to blaze through as many cases as you can? Are you supposed to just push the process along as fast as you can?

Underwriter: Within reason. Some companies have it down to, “We think you should be able to review so many cases per hour for your initial look-at or initial walk through.” Some cases have even, I believe, actually [tied through 00:04:56 ] what they believe their average underwriter can get through an APS and other documentation task for. It just really depends on the carrier and what their expectations are.

Jeff Root: Got you. Okay, so I guess the question we have here that we took from the community. We asked our community a bunch of questions that they would ask an underwriter if they had the chance to. A few of the questions here, we’ll start with one, is, when underwriting times are slow all around for a company … We get some companies that sometimes take two to three months just on average. It’s not just because of one case that the APS took forever or whatever. Is it because of caseload that you guys are getting just bombarded with cases? Is it you got short staff? Is there anything else that it can be? Because it seems like every once in a while carriers take months for decisions on average.

Underwriter: Right. Those are two of the big ones. Caseloads can get in your way. Sometimes you have ten or fifteen cases just to follow up on and look at and prod the field and say, “Hey, I’m waiting for this information. Do you have it?,” or, “Do you have any further information about when you might have it?” You can also be waiting for the things on files. You can order discretionary requirements that might need time to take in. MIB code details might need time, public record checks, things like that. Financial requirements, those can take extra time off your day, too.

It can also take a whole bunch more time if you’re having to talk to reps about your decisions, so a twenty minute phone call sometimes, or just bouncing emails back and forth and just saying, “Well, this is the reason we rated you,” and, “Well, why is that? When did you find this?” It’s back and forth. You come out and you do one thing, and then you see a reply from this person. You don’t want to leave them hanging, so you reply again to them. It goes back and forth for what feels like for ever, and it’s only ten minutes, but it’s ten minutes that you’re not looking at this other case.

Jeff Root: Got you. Overall, I know there’s times where that happens. For example, I’m not going to call any companies this year, but there is one company this year that was taking on average ninety days from application submitted to an actual decision. That wasn’t just one-offs, this was everybody that was submitting cases to this company, and it’s a big company. It happened to another big company earlier in the year. We’re wondering why those happen. We understand the delays because of all the reasons you just mentioned, but as far as that goes, do you have any insights to that at all?

Underwriter: It could be carrier-specific. When you get APSs, you usually order through a couple of different copy services, so there could have been a breakdown in relationships there.

Jeff Root: Okay.

Underwriter: I know that a couple of different places that we get records from we expect them to take at least four to six weeks minimum without breaking a sweat. Kaiser Permanente is one that’s notorious for that.

Jeff Root: Yeah. I’m sure the VA as well.

Underwriter: [crosstalk 00:07:46 ] KP records and, yeah, VA records are all of the [peach 00:07:49 ]. If they’re not slow, then they’re totally disorganized, and you have to deal with it that way. It could be a host of things going on. I would expect something like it’s a caseload/requirements-gathering type of thing.

Jeff Root: Okay. All right. Next question here to shift gears a little bit. Why don’t life insurance companies give agents underwriting guides that you work from? Not the field underwriting guides we get, because they’re often broad and vague. They’