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, beaches, all across the nation.

Jeff Root: Welcome to episode number 37 of the modern life insurance selling podcast. I’m your host, Jeff Root. Today we’ll speaking with the president and COO of Sagicor Life Insurance about his company and then we’ll tap into this insights on where he thinks the non med life insurance marketplace is going, and just talk non medical life insurance in general. If you’re not familiar with Sagicor Life Insurance, they’re one of the best non med life insurance companies to arrive at the moment, or our agency’s favorite non med carrier. That’s for so many reasons that we’ll discuss in this podcast episode. First, if you like what you hear and our listening in iTunes or Stitcher, please leave us a review and if you have any questions or would like a topic cover on a future podcast, please use the send voice mail tab over at SellTermLife.com.

All right, so today we have Bart Catmull, president of Sagicor Life Insurance. Bart’s been with Sagicor since 1999 and in my opinion, is leading one of the more progressive life insurance companies and we’ll dig into that today. All right, welcome to the podcast Bart.

Bart Catmull: Glad to be here Jeff.

Jeff Root: All right, so let’s kick this thing off by telling us a little bit about your background at Sagicor. From what I’ve read I see you’ve had a few positions there before becoming president and COO right?

Bart Catmull: That’s correct. Actually I’ve been with the company since 1999. At that point in time it was under a different brand and in 2005 it was acquired by Sagicor financial corp which is a Barbadian life insurance company that’s been around since the 1840s. It has a wealth of history and being with, supporting friends and family. I started out as the chief financial officer and held that position until 2006, which time I became the chief operating officer and then have held that position and title until today. I became the president, I guess last year. Is that right? I had to think about that one. Maybe it’s been two years now. Time flies when you’re having fun and we’re actually … It’s been a great experience with me. I love the company. I’ve seen ups and downs with the economy and the world in general but we’ve weathered the storm and are growing dramatically.

Jeff Root: Awesome. We love the company too and I’m glad to have you on here. I’ve made it known that I’m a huge Sagicor fan and in our private community, and one of our most popular threads is our Sagicor thread with agents sharing their experiences and the reason we’re riding so much Sagicor business is you guys have a such a well priced non med product and easy application, fast decision times, which in most times is instant, and you have a non med [inaudible 00:03:33 ] to top it all off. You guys make it really easy to send you business and the non med market has been so stagnant for so long and you guys in my opinion are the tops of the non med market. What do you see as Sagicor’s biggest strengths in the market right now?

Bart Catmull: I think it flows from our beliefs and it’s important to understand if somebody doesn’t understand why they do something than they’re not going to do it very well. It all stems from our belief that we’re here to serve our friends and family and neighbors. We’re here to make things simple and straight forward and we’re all about long term solutions. As we looked at the marketplace, we felt that one of the areas that we could really have a major impact in the lives of our friends and family neighbors was on those lower face amounts. When I say lower, it’s I mean, on the term we go to $400,000 and on the guaranteed UL it’s 250, so it’s not that low but we really wanted to make a difference there. We know that we all want to have in this day and age instantaneous, almost instantaneous results.

It didn’t make sense for us at that level why someone should have to wait around six weeks for a decision. We live in a day and age when there are significant amounts of technology and information available to make decisions that you shouldn’t have to wait that long. We took a platform that we had internally and looked around for partners that on the technology side that had similar philosophies as us. We said, “Listen, let’s make a change here.” Our goals was to have everyone have the advantage of having our best underwriter on their best day 24/7. That’s what we set out to do.

When we talk about non med, we wanted to do something different that I believe, the questions that we ask, the information that we get whether it be from a potential policy holder or from outside sources provides us with the information that we need to make a very knowledgeable decision in a few minutes. It can be as quick as a few seconds but definitely within a few minutes. We can make that decision and give that policy holder the peace of mind that if they have done everything that they’ve been asked to do and have been truthful in their responses, and pay their premium, that they’re going to have a policy in place within 24 hours. It’ll be in place. They’ll be covered and their family will be protected and it just takes one thing off their table that they have to worry about.

Jeff Root: Yeah, and the way you guys do that too is so seamless. One of the biggest strengths that I see with your product is you have different health classifications, preferred, standard, rated pricing options on your non med term. That is huge because you can take a wide range of people and be competitive in different situations.

Bart Catmull: Exactly. If you look out there and the industry statistics tell us that most of the life insurance that general public has comes from their employer. They’ve got a group policy that their employer has just given them. That’s great except that all of those group policies are taking into account that there’s healthy and unhealthy people and they’re mixing that rate. While it’s easy, the employee doesn’t have to do anything. They didn’t have to have any picture or prods or anything that they needed to do. It can be expensive. It’s kind of a stealth expense, but it’s expensive. What we wanted to do was provide them with quality coverage, great benefits and come as close as we could to the ability to basically, a pricing of a fully underwritten product without the expense of incurring … To go out and do the medical exams and all that.

That’s what we set out to do. That was the direction that I gave the underwriters and the actuaries was okay, figure this out. It allows us, what they’ve done I think is great in that it allows us … Somebody’s got great health, they’re going to get a great rate. If somebody is a little, they’ve got a few issues health wise, they’re still going to get a good rate and they’re going to get an answer real quick. That’s an added benefit to them.

Jeff Root: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like the no exam life insurance market took a step back from what was available to agents four to five years ago until you guys came in. We had HSBC go all the way up to 500,000 with an instant decision and consumers could apply online without an agent. Same thing with RBC Liberty Life, except they had a 250K cap. I guess my question for you is, I know you guys are doing this right now but why aren’t we seeing these types of products on the market right now?

Bart Catmull: I think that … One reason why is from a re-insurance standpoint, the re-insurers are just getting up to speed. Pricing of the products is always an issue. The technology is just coming into play. I think that you have to have companies who are willing to be innovative to look out there and look at information in a different way, work with partners who … Some of the partners we worked with in developing this were just starting out. We saw the benefit and the expertise that they had in their platforms that made us excited and said, “Hey, you know what, we’ll take a chance with you. We’ll work on this together and come to a common solution.” I also think it takes individuals who are knowledgeable on technology as well.

I fully expected that yes, the marketplace is going to grow in this area because everyday new technologies come into play that allow us as an insurance company to analyze risk better which then provides the opportunity for us to provide that benefit to policy holders and providing improved products at better rates.

Jeff Root: Awesome. Where do you see no exam life insurance going next? You guys have already implemented this technology, lots of new technology coming out. Wh