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COSS Pretties Up the Picture

Kansas City Life Insurance (Kansas City, Mo.; more than $30 billion of insurance in force) realized that it could increase sales of fixed and variable universal life, whole life and term products by customizing the business concepts in its insurance illustrations for individual customers, and by making the illustrations more attractive. "We needed a better way to illustrate various concepts such as nonqualified deferred compensation, split-dollar plan and buy-sell agreements to a customer, and a way to tie in products with the illustration," says Robert Hopkins, assistant vice president of advanced sales and business insurance at Kansas City Life Insurance.

After conducting in-house pilots of three marketing vendors' software in November 2004, Kansas City Life selected COSS Development Corp.'s (Huntersville, N.C.) Tapestry 2004 marketing software in April 2005. "Tapestry software brings color and life to our numbers," says Hopkins. "With it, we can demonstrate how our products can help solve a prospective client's problems."

Tapestry contains a total of 21 planning modules dealing with various nonqualified employee benefits, estate liquidity funding, premium funding, mortgage assurance and the comparative analysis of various financial accumulation and risk transfer vehicles. The Web-based application is installed onto a desktop from a CD and integrates data directly from the carrier's illustration system into charts to help agents show customers how the carrier's products work. After receiving feedback from agents on the new product, Hopkins says, "It makes the education process much easier by helping the prospective customer understand what insurance can do for them, and it makes it easier for our agents to sell." -- M.W.

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