Compulife Introduces Table Ratings to its Life Insurance Quote Software


Compulife quotes hundreds of different life insurance products for more than 125 life insurance companies.

Compulife Software, Inc. has introduced an important new quoting feature allowing users to automatically obtain quotes for table rated life insurance premiums. The user specifies the Table Rating value that they believe the client can qualify for and the Compulife program automatically produces the corresponding premiums, for that table, for all life insurance products in Compulife’s table rating database.

Table rated premiums are higher than normal premiums that life insurance companies offer to consumers who cannot otherwise qualify for standard premiums. For example, if an individual has diabetes they will likely have to pay a higher premium for a new life insurance policy. The industry calls such cases “substandard” and uses tables based upon the severity of the problem. The additonal premium added to a standard life insurance premium is called a table premium and that is determined from up to 16 different tables that a life insurance company may or may not offer. The company’s underwriting department ultimately decides which table may be available.

Compulife President Bob Barney emphasized that consumers who have existing life insurance policies at standard rates are not impacted by table ratings. Table rating only impact the purchase of a new insurance policy. For the vast majority of life insurance products, once a consumer owns a life insurance policy a change in their individual health does not change the premiums for that life insurance policy.

The new Table Rating quote option is a free and automatic upgrade for all Compulife subscribers.

A typical life insurance agent that purchases Compulife can get an annual subscription for as little as $96 per year. That $96 gives them access to quotes from hundred of policies from over 100 life insurance companies. The $96 option is called “Compulife Basic” and it is web based application that will run on computers, smart phones, tablets or any device with a browser and web access. Most Compulife customers upgrade and subscribe to the Windows PC version of the software which is $180 per year (includes Compulife Basic). The Windows PC version is Compulife’s most sophisticated quoting tool.

Both versions of Compulife now offer automatic table rating quotes.

Compulife President Bob Barney said, “Compulife has a 37 year long tradition of continuing to improve our software products. As we move forward we add new features and capabilities to the software and most of those are included in the annual cost of the subscription.”

Prior to the release of the new Table Ratings option Compulife subscribers could do a table rating but they needed to manually enter the additional percentage information to produce the individual quote. The new option is fully automated and simply asks the agent which table they want to quote. From there the software instantly produces a comparison for all the products for that table rated premium.

Barney explained, “We did not do this previously because of the complexity of some table rating calculations. In some cases the additional cost of a table rating is a relatively simple calculation, in other cases it is so complicated that the only way to quote the various tables for a product is to actually store the rates for all those different tables for just that one product. That can be a lot of additional work.”

The updating of rates for existing products, and the addition of new products and rates, are key elements of the subscription service that Compulife provides its customers. When life insurance companies introduce new products or change rates for existing products Compulife makes those changes and automatically updates its customers. That is included in the annual subscription fee that Compulife charges for its service.

Barney explained that this can be a lot of work on Compulife’s part, especially if a number of companies all make changes at the same time. With the addition of the new table ratings quote feature it means even more work. Barney said, “In the case of some products for which we have added table ratings, the data entry for just one product can take as much as a couple of days whereas with an average product the data entry time can be less. While that may not sound like a big job, you have to keep in mind that between the U.S. and Canada, Compulife quotes hundreds of different life insurance products for more than 125 life insurance companies. It’s a big job.”

Barney went on to emphasize that Compulife’s objective is simple, quote as many life insurance products for as many companies as possible and do so accurately. He added, “Our customers do not care if our software was accurate last month, last week or even yesterday. What they want are accurate quotes for products right now and they have little patience when they encounter a premium that is not accurate. Knowing this we have to be certain that whatever new quoting features we add that we can keep them as up-to-date and accurate as we do for the products that we already quote. Compulife has a longstanding reputation for being accurate and we need to be cautious that we do nothing to undermine that reputation.”

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