Zurich Underwriting Service Improvements Continue

To facilitate even more decisions at point of submission, we are now going to ask the relevant underwriting questions on the five most common medical conditions which our analysis tells us can be normally accepted at standard rates during the application process. These conditions are:

• Anxiety / Stress / Depression
• Asthma
• High Blood Pressure
• High Cholesterol
• Thyroid disorders

To help you capture the right information at outset we have now added redesigned versions of these five questionnaires into our editable, paper, and online application forms. We believe that this will help to eliminate the requirement for an additional questionnaire to be issued by the underwriting team later in the process and will lead to most cases with these conditions getting a decision at the point of submission (subject to normal underwriting considerations).

The questionnaires have been redesigned in such a way as to minimise the number of questions and only ask what we require. In fact, based on analysis of our 2021 underwriting experience we estimate that this change could reduce the number of additional pieces of evidence requested by approximately 8% for non-interactive cases a huge win for you and your client resulting in significant time savings and quicker policy acceptance.

Updated Application Forms

Our updated protection application forms will be available on Zurichbroker.ie over the next few days and our online journey will be updated from Tuesday morning allowing you to submit these new applications with the new additional questionnaires. 

Over the next few days, you should replace any Zurich protection applications that you have saved on your drives and dispose of any ‘hard copy’ paper application forms.

Speaking about these changes Colette Houton, Head of Underwriting at Zurich says,

Over the last few months, we have been listening to the feedback from our Financial Brokers on what matters for risk applications. We understand speed and quicker to issue is key. We see this initiative as speeding up the process with minimum requests. I believe this initiative makes sense to everyone involved in Risk. For clients, it means a quicker and slicker process which for the majority will mean health questions being asked once. In addition, the copy of the application incorporates the answers to the common health questions. For Financial Brokers, it means quicker turnaround and less interruptions to the process. For underwriters, it means more time available to provide better service for the cases that require more underwriting. We will continue to listen to your feedback and aim to keep making incremental improvements which benefit us all.

 
Contact us with any queries on 01 7992825

Colette Houton, Head of Underwriting