How American Fidelity is staying competitive and reaching new markets

Headquarters:  
Oklahoma City, OK
Typical group size:  
500+ lives
Regions serviced:  
National

American Fidelity Assurance Company is a supplemental benefits provider serving more than one million policyholders across 49 states with a focus on offering a different opinion for customers in the education, public sector, automotive, and healthcare industries.

Lori Sartori is regional sales manager at American Fidelity and is responsible for sales and marketing of their direct-to-market medical stop loss program. With more than 20 years of experience in the insurance industry, she’s an indispensable resource to clients and colleagues on all things self-funding and stop loss. She shared her experience of partnering with ThreeFlow and how it’s changed her team's ability to stay competitive, gain efficiencies, and reach new markets.

Why ThreeFlow?

We heard about ThreeFlow through the grapevine and connected with CEO Ryan Sachtjen in early 2020. We did a couple of demos to see how it could fit into and improve our workflow. Shortly thereafter, we decided to become a certified carrier.

It was an easy decision for a few reasons. First, we saw that ThreeFlow wouldn’t hinder our ability to work directly with the broker–ensuring our message and value propositions came through clearly. We appreciated that we would have the ability to add recommendations, send marketing materials, and insert call-outs to specific areas in a plan design. We felt this would help us maintain our competitive advantage.

Second, we could see that we would be able to gain many efficiencies in the RFP process. One in particular was how easily we could download secure attachments from ThreeFlow and upload them into an underwriting system. Before ThreeFlow, we would often worry about losing some of those documents in the manual process of downloading and uploading files one by one. Now, we’re confident that we have all the information we need in one place.

"If you want to stay competitive, you should be using ThreeFlow."

What other platforms did you consider?

We looked at a few other RFP management and quote submission software but felt they weren’t as intuitive as ThreeFlow. It didn’t take our team long to see the value that ThreeFlow added and get others excited about the possibilities.

What were the outcomes you were hoping to achieve?

We had two main goals when we first started using ThreeFlow. To start, many of our broker partners were already using ThreeFlow to submit RFPs, so we wanted to make it easy for them to work with us. They’ve been really pleased that we’ve come onboard and are excited for how much easier the entire process has been.

In the future, we want to expand our distribution into markets that we don’t work with yet. The insights we receive from ThreeFlow are allowing us to get a peek into some of these markets and start to understand how we can better position ourselves to win that business.

"If you want to stay competitive, you should be using ThreeFlow."

What other platforms did you consider?

We looked at a few other RFP management and quote submission software but felt they weren’t as intuitive as ThreeFlow. It didn’t take our team long to see the value that ThreeFlow added and get others excited about the possibilities.

What were the outcomes you were hoping to achieve?

We had two main goals when we first started using ThreeFlow. To start, many of our broker partners were already using ThreeFlow to submit RFPs, so we wanted to make it easy for them to work with us. They’ve been really pleased that we’ve come onboard and are excited for how much easier the entire process has been.

In the future, we want to expand our distribution into markets that we don’t work with yet. The insights we receive from ThreeFlow are allowing us to get a peek into some of these markets and start to understand how we can better position ourselves to win that business.

What are some of the most significant benefits you and your team have experienced since working on ThreeFlow?

Honestly, it’s effortless to do business on ThreeFlow. We can download an RFP with one click, upload our quoted rates, and easily add additional marketing materials. Then, once we’re selected, it’s quick to follow up and finalize terms.

We also enjoy the reporting that’s available to carriers. For example, we can see the breakdown by industry, company size, and region on RFPs to which we’re invited. That empowers us to have better discussions with brokers on how we can get into new markets and opportunities.

All in all, we feel that ThreeFlow is easy to use, eliminates E&O concerns, and allows us to reach more markets.

What would be your advice to brokers considering changing their current process?

Most brokerage firms are going one of two ways today: a general agency or a technology solution. We’ve found that technology is better at creating a more efficient RFP process and doesn’t create an extra layer of noise between the carrier and broker.

In the end, we see that RFPs that come through ThreeFlow are more complete. For carriers, a more complete RFP means we see the entire story and can provide a better quote. Bottom line: if you want to stay competitive, you should be using ThreeFlow.

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