Norwich Union has negotiated a link from The Exchange IFA portal that will allow term assurance cases to be submitted online. If approved, the application will generate an acceptance decision within minutes, and the entire process can be completed in around 15 minutes, compared with about four days for the old manual system.
The service, called Life Cover In An Instant, is available on Norwich Union’s own IFA extranet and went live on 4 February. At the moment, only Legal & General offers a similar capability.
Keith Simm, mortgage and protection marketing manager at Norwich Union, said: ‘From 18 February there will be a link from The Exchange so IFAs will be able to go from the portal directly into the online application form. IFAs will be able to run from a comparison to a quote to a submission of the application form and a decision from Norwich Union ‘ all online. We are talking to the other main portals in terms of having links from them as well.’
Apart from the online process, Norwich Union is offering an offline process that will pre-populate an offline application form from the fact find, which would then be sent online, but processed via the normal new business system, with acceptance terms in the post.
This would enable the IFA to take a laptop to a client and do a fact find then send the application later on. If the application is not approved the offline method would be used.
