Well, the Washington state deadline has passed (thankfully) and there were many lessons that should have been learned from it. I am not going to hammer any of the “big picture” learnings like the Washington elected leaders and bureaucrats developed a plan in a bubble.
And, the opinions of the mandate aren’t very favorable … check out this opinion piece from the Seattle Times a few days ago.
They are all good points but I won’t jump on the bandwagon and beat it up any more. Others can do that. I want to share three things that we all should take away from this Washington state surge in business.
When you know that a deadline is looming – do not wait. We (carriers, agents/brokers, and people who are impacted by the Washington state action) have known about the mandate and the associated deadlines. What happened initially? Not much – it was business as usual. As time passed, concern crept in and the great flood of business occurred and you know the rest of the story.
The biggest obstacle is human nature and the tendency to procrastinate. The level of urgency did not sink in until the deadline was looming and options started falling from the table.
Certainly, more could have been done on multiple levels but the fact is that proactive messaging (early and often) led to stronger action. The take away here is communicate, educate, and promote. At OneAmerica, we offer a boatload of tools in our OneAmerica Marketing Store that you can use and customize.
When you do take action, embrace technology. Another thing that cropped up on the carrier side with the great flood of business was execution. Simply, paper slowed the process down. Applications submitted electronically moved much more quickly through the system – from submission to commission.
At OneAmerica, we offer three access points to our electronic submission process – the OneAmerica One Source Online (https://onesourceonline.oneamerica.com/) or from our Care Solutions Calculator (https://www.oneamerica.com//caresolutionscalculator/index.html) or via iPipeline.
We even created a “how to” video for you. The long and the short of it is if you used technology, your business moved more quickly.
Remember the PPP principle – pretty poor planning by one party does not constitute a crisis for another. This says it all – a crisis on your part (or your clients) because they did not act early is their own doing. You can’t throw a “Hail Mary” pass to address their problem now can the carriers if they procrastinate. The only take away here is act early.
At OneAmerica, with our breadth of funding options and plan designs, we can develop a strategy to align with your clients specific goals. If it is short duration with the lowest guaranteed premium – we can do that. If it is repositioning a nonqualified deferred annuity so their income is not touched – we can do that . If it is using qualified monies to pay for premiums – we can do that. If it is an unlimited lifetime benefit loaded to the gills for a couple – we can do that. If they want full liquidity from day 1 – we can do that.
The big take-away is that we have the tools to help you AND we all learned a little something over this past year.
To discuss what we can do to help you, schedule a meeting with me (virtually or in-person) – you can call or text me at (678) 512-9627 or via email at kevin.fisher@oneamerica.com
Join Michael Florio and me on our weekly webcast LTC Coffee Break where we share new ideas with you every Tuesday morning at 10 am. LTCcoffeebreak.com is your home page to everything LTC Coffee Break including new episode, an archive of every broadcast, and much more.
For product questions and illustration assistance – call Justin Fox at (844) 658-3725 or email at justinfox.isp@oneamerica.com
Fridays with Fisher 