Zinnia’s Nicole Buckenmeyer talks AI, consumer needs, and the future of life insurance sales

Speaking at a Sept. 15 panel discussion at the 2024 LIMRA National Conference, Nicole Buckenmeyer, Head of Distribution, Marketplace at Zinnia, spoke about the changing state of direct-to-consumer life sales, and how technology is poised to change the way new consumers buy life insurance. 

At the panel, titled “Insurtech: The Teenage Years” and moderated by LIMRA Vice President Kartik Sakthivel, Buckenmeyer joined other industry experts to dive into some of the challenges facing direct life sales.

Meeting the expectations of tech-fluent customers

“Gen Z and these [younger] generations have completely different expectations about purchasing life insurance and the servicing of it, and the expectations of having this data readily available to them,” Buckenmeyer said. 

“It’s really, really hard to be able to provide that. So our goal at Zinnia is helping to create some of those end-to-end tech solutions. But it needs to be done quickly and efficiently.”

With over 25 years in direct-to-consumer life sales, Buckenmeyer spoke from experience about where the industry started, where it’s headed now, and how innovative technology is a key path forward for carriers and vendors in meeting the needs of today’s life insurance consumers. 

“I started, in my early twenties, selling life insurance direct-to-consumer. That’s where I’ve been most of my career,” Buckenmeyer said. “So I’ve spent most of my time understanding what the consumer’s frustrations are.”

Tech products that meet real needs

Through her work at Policygenius, Zinnia’s direct sales marketplace, and her role as President of LIDMA, Buckenmeyer has had a front row seat to the needs of shoppers — which also means she has perspective about the tools that can make the life insurance buying process smoother for everyone involved. 

One technology in particular that’s already having a real business impact and helping boost direct sales is AI; Zinnia implements it in its call center to create automatic summaries of calls, track call times, and help provide feedback for agents.

“You’ve got agents talking to consumers on the phone and you’re worried, are they following the script, are they asking the medical questions appropriately. We have carrier partners that are expecting them to ask the questions exactly right … so they’re completely unbiased. So we spend a lot of time monitoring the calls, listening to them, giving feedback.” 

That’s where AI really makes a difference, Buckenmeyer said. “Our folks have developed an AI call listening tool … we put in all of the factors of what we wanted it to score, what was important. It provides a transcript and then it scores every single call and shoots it out to the leader of that team. So we have 100% of the calls now being scored.”

This has meant more time saved on the QA end as well as increased trust with carriers, Buckenmeyer said.

“Now we’re able to go to the carrier proactively and go, hey, we just wanna let you know there’s this trend that we identified … it’s been addressed.”

The future of insurtech 

Tools like this are only the beginning of what Buckenmeyer said is a big change coming for the direct sales industry thanks to AI. “If you’re injecting AI into it responsibly, you can reduce the errors and issues … streamlining the process and making a better experience for the customer.”

This means everyone involved in direct sales will be able to spend less time on the types of administrative tasks that can be automated and more time actually servicing the customer. “It allows our workforce to go work on more important, better things, to keep innovating and growing … so let the AI solve some of these smaller problems.”

“Start solutioning”

The key to success here, Buckenmeyer explained, is in working closely with carrier partners [along with legal and compliance partners] when designing those insurtech solutions, to ensure they meet the needs and capabilities of the carriers. It’s also essential for insurtech companies themselves to fully understand the business and its needs.

“It sort of involves a brain trust,” Buckenmeyer said. “Because not every one of us has all the answers. You’re talking about all the individual state regulations, all of the challenges that get in our way today that can inhibit us from the innovation piece because there are so many hoops that you have to jump through and so many considerations.”

So how do you create solutions that account for the complicated ins-and-outs of the insurance sales industry? “It really is as simple as, you get all the right people in a room together. That involves the carrier side, it’s tech, it’s compliance, it’s the attorney, it’s all the people that know these things. Get them in a room and start solutioning. I don’t think we [in the industry] do that enough.”

Disclaimer: Edited for length and clarity.