Risky Business

Strategies to streamline the settlement process for corporately owned life insurance policies. Enhance the efficiency of the settlement process, benefiting your clients.

Ways that underwriters and advisors can help ease the administrative burden on our health care system to help health care workers focus more on patient care, and less on administration.

Keeping beneficiary and ownership details up-to-date helps ensure the life insurance claim submission process is quick and efficient and the death benefit is paid as quickly as possible.

There are reasons you may send an application to multiple insurers – to get them the best possible offer in the most reasonable amount of time. We’re sharing tips to help make this a smooth and timely experience for you and your client.

Our cast of underwriting characters – who we are and how we adhere to underwriting guidelines, stay on top of medical advances, and seek new ways to make the process more efficient, to ensure our team delivers underwriting excellence.

Make Manulife your trusted partner for handling diabetes cases. Learn tips to help your diabetic clients get the best underwriting offer.

When it comes to underwriting, we recognize that some women face unique and significant health issues earlier in their lives than men and could benefit from insurance coverage.

We’ve updated our underwriting guidelines to ensure new-to-Canada clients have access to our Manulife insurance products to provide them with the protection they need.

We’ve established an Impaired Risk Team that specializes in underwriting our most common impairments: diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and stroke.

Learn how our insurance team prioritized improving doing business with us and updated several new business, underwriting, inforce, and claims processes, to address pain points.

Learn how Jack Frost makes decisions easier and lives better for residents at the North Pole, with tool and process enhancements, in our underwriting team’s December edition of Risky Business.

Learn about why our underwriting team may rate for a risk, how they do this, and how to explain this to your client(s).

Refreshed insurance illustrations and application tools and application questions help to streamline doing business with us.

Keeping in touch and providing relevant client details on an insurance application can help us reach an underwriting decision faster for your client.

Providing medication and treatment information to our underwriting team on the insurance application form can help us move your cases through the underwriting process faster.

Has your client outgrown their term insurance policy? Now might be the right time to convert their entire policy or a portion, to a permanent product.

To make it easier and faster for you, let us take care of the phone interview for you.

Risky Business May 2023 - Tips for a quick and seamless claims process!

Risky Business April 2023 - Less is not always more when it comes to underwriting – Time-saving tips!

Risky Business March 2023 - Complete insurance applications easier using medical evidence.

Risky Business February 2023 - Quick delivery secures insurability

Risky Business November 2022 - Making strides to help our advisors’ business practices and improve the customer experience and issue policies to clients faster.

Risky Business July 2022 - What’s the deal with Deposit Option on term conversions to Manulife Par? Your clients may benefit from Manulife Par’s pre-approved default lifetime Deposit Option limit.

Risky Business June 2022 - Electronic from start to finish! From application to claim, our easy-to-use tools make insurance hassle-free so you can keep your business moving - anytime, anywhere.

New Form “NN1703 - Certified copy of a resolution of the board of directors” can help you satisfy AML requirements more easily.

Accelerated underwriting is available for life insurance applicants ages 18 to 50 for insurance amounts up to and including $5 million CAD.

We know access to reinsurance capacity is important for your large case business, so we’re offering you more.

Risky Business: Life claims payments – Where the rubber meets the road

I know we’re all pretty tired of talking about the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, we’ll need to discuss it for the foreseeable future.

Many of our daily activities, both personally and professionally, have changed over the last year. One professional activity that hasn’t changed is the requirement to deliver policy contracts to your clients.

Stacking – taking advantage of the increased fluid testing limits and applying to multiple insurance companies to maximize the amount of insurance their clients can get without testing

Jack Frost meets the insurance needs of Santa and his elves, even during the pandemic.

We’re using technology to turnaround cases faster and to help make it easier for advisors to do business in a non-face-to-face manner, during the pandemic.

Our underwriting team can help with your sales and client relationships by bridging the gap between clients and our Head Office underwriter! Greg Lands, Manulife field underwriter, shares how.

Illustration systems are flexible to allow for the unique circumstances of clients. The illustrations are subject to financial underwriting guidelines and the underwriter’s approval.

While adjusting to the “new normal” of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we are making our underwriting services more accessible and viable for our customers.

We recognize that your large case business is unique and it deserves special attention, that's why we have an entire team to support you.

Our improved underwriting team structure allows us to focus more clearly on defined business segments.

Manulife has a strong track record of innovating in the Canadian market - including being the first company to insure diabetics.

We’re finally able to offer you a fillable PDF form that you can attach as a DI supplement with your life and/or critical illness e-Applications.

Like the big screen heroes from the Men in Black movie, there’s a certain mystery about the real MIB. So it’s good to know that the Medical Information Bureau (MIB) is actually all about sharing.

If your client is expecting, having a baby can mean changing more than diapers. It can mean planning for the unexpected by buying insurance.

More medical facilities have developed their own unique authorization forms for Attending Physician’s Statements (APS).

An insurance contract is unique from other contracts because it’s a contract of utmost good faith. And that means insureds must disclose all material information when they apply.

On May 4, 2017 Bill S-201 became law. The law prohibits the use of genetic test results for the purposes of underwriting an insurance application or adjudicating a policy claim.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” Jack Frost sang softly to himself as the sled he rode in swooshed and swayed. Jack was on his way to the North Pole to perform his annual review of the Claus family and business insurance portfolio.

Synergy is a unique combination of disability, critical illness and life insurance, and that calls for a unique approach to underwriting.

Each year, in the spirit of the season, your underwriters like to share the insurance needs of the North Pole’s most famous resident, Mr. S. Claus.

Years ago, many direct insurance companies had small retention limits. They relied on reinsurers for their underwriting expertise when it came to large face amounts and high-risk life insurance cases.

The dictionary describes gridlock as a “traffic jam so bad that movement is not possible.” If you’ve ever experienced gridlock, then you know it’s enough to make your blood boil.

How healthy do your clients think they are? How does it compare to reality? Does it affect what they disclose on an insurance application?

Your client is the image of fitness and you can’t believe he’s been rated. It’s a difficult situation. What you recommend next is key.

Most insurance is sold in the traditional manner, to protect a family or business against loss of income in the event of death, disability or illness. Products are designed with various features including ‘accumulation’ which allows savings within the product on a tax advantaged basis.

Delivering an insurance policy, collecting the premium and completing the delivery requirements are like fitting together the last few pieces of a puzzle. Suddenly, you have the big picture.

In June, we changed our underwriting requirements and also took a new approach to underwriting people age 75+. Why the change for older ages?

We’ve made our guidelines for non ‘face-to-face’ sales simpler. Now you don't need underwriting pre-approval for critical illness, disability and Synergy.

At Manulife, we strive to creatively underwrite all insurance risks. That’s why we now offer avalanche exclusions for backcountry sports enthusiasts.

By now you've heard about Accelerated Underwriting and if you haven't, here is a link to our previous Risky Business article. During the month of May, close to 40% of the life applications submitted qualified for accelerated underwriting. We issued many of these cases in 11 days or less.

Every few months, Risky Business focuses on tips for getting your insurance business issued faster. We also highlight the impact “not in good order” applications have on your business.

Getting older brings its challenges and qualifying for insurance is one. Manulife wants to help you succeed in this key market, so we’re the first in Canada to offer a new underwriting approach.

Did you know each unanswered or incomplete question on an insurance application means your application has to be handled at least nine additional times?

For most people, when it comes to their list of favourite pastimes, going to the doctor ranks right up there with filing taxes and root canal.

A major aspect of “insurable interest” is the question of who owns and controls the insurance policy and who benefits from it.

If your clients recently completed medical tests for an insurance application, we can use those test results when they apply for insurance with Manulife. Like you, we prefer not to make clients do medical tests twice.

When we were younger, we used to borrow our parent’s cars, tools and cash. Today, your client may ask about “borrowing” their parent’s insurability. What’s that all about?

You’ve made the sale and you’re ready to deliver the policy. But is everything “in good order?” If it is, it will help us pay your commission faster.

The Internet is a fantastic research, communication and marketing tool. Many Canadians use it to book vacations, buy shoes or stay in touch with friends and family.

It’s the advisor sacred oath: thou shalt make sure that clients are fully and accurately answering all the questions on the application.

With the current state of the economy, some advisors are having a difficult time getting warm leads or a commitment from prospective clients to purchase the insurance product they applied for.

Whether it’s the need for speed, the adrenaline rush, or just the sheer thrill of it, “extreme” sports present a unique challenge for sports enthusiasts … and underwriters.

Over the past year, Manulife has made significant changes to how we review, process and issue life and living benefit insurance policies, making the buying process easier for you and your clients.

Underwriters are often questioned or even “challenged” about the need for documents like tax returns and corporate financial statements as proof of income for disability applications. Here’s information on why we need financial information for all types of insurance.

A powerful cover letter can be the key to unlocking a complex insurance case. However, it can also slow down a straight-forward case. Here’s a look at when to use a cover letter and when not to.

One evening last week I got home and the air conditioner was running full blast. Like many of you, we automatically lower our air conditioning at night for a more comfortable sleep – but not until 10 p.m.

When it comes to insurance, the first premium is important. So, how can you be sure your client’s cheque is in good order?

When it comes to the amount of insurance a company can insure or “retain”, bigger is better. And now we’re even bigger – up to $20-million bigger.

Attending Physician Statements (APS) provide more protective value than any other piece of medical evidence we obtain during the underwriting process. The challenge we face is the expense and time it takes to obtain one.

Manulife launched accelerated underwriting for life insurance products in May 2016. Many of you – and thousands of your customers – have experienced an improved underwriting process.

In other Risky Business articles, we’ve discussed our ‘underwriting tool belt’ and one of those tools is the underwriting questionnaire.

Last year, we introduced the Mature Age Supplement (MAS) test to help us make better offers to clients age 70 and older. If you have clients in this age group, you know there are more underwriting challenges.

Have you ever received an alert from Underwriting letting you know your client’s application has been ‘referred’? It’s not necessarily a bad sign. Here are the three most common reasons why.

For years the insurance industry has struggled with informal inquiries from advisors about the potential insurability of clients.

Did you know almost 30% of applications are “not in good order?” We went back to the basics to find out why – and the results are interesting.

I recently took a math course and was asked to show all my work in the homework assignments to demonstrate that I understood the formulas and how to apply them.

A 2016 study completed by Munich Re Life insurance reported the average policy cycle time in the industry is 30 days. Of course, smaller cases can be much quicker and, for larger cases, the opposite can be true.

Canadians with a family history of specific cancers are having more regular routine screenings, particularly colonoscopies and mammograms.

Between vacations, stay-cations, cottages, and backyard BBQs, the Manulife underwriting and new business teams had a busy summer developing tools and improving services to make doing business with us even easier.

June 2019 - Our industry has well established financial underwriting guidelines and practices to safeguard against over-insurance.