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TPA SERVICES

Life & Annuity Third-Party Administration (TPA) Services

Zinnia provides full third-party administration and custom operational support for life and annuity carriers. Combine administration services and support for specific workflows around your business needs, with responsibilities, controls, and service levels defined for your engagement.

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We offer a range of administration and support solutions

FULL THIRD-PARTY ADMINISTRATION

Full policy administration with Zinnia

End-to-end administration and operational support for carriers that want Zinnia to take on a broader operating role. Zinnia administers the business on the carrier’s behalf; the carrier retains the insurance risk and the underlying authority.

  • New business and policy administration
  • In-force servicing and claims-processing support within carrier-defined authority, procedures, and controls
  • Correspondence and mail operations
  • Finance operations and reconciliation support within the agreed administration scope
  • Operations spanning broker-dealer, BGA, IMO, wirehouse, bank, and direct channels
Talk to us about TPA Services Full policy administration with Zinnia

TARGETED OPERATIONAL SUPPORT

Targeted support with Agent Services

Insurance-experienced professionals, licensed where the work calls for it, and proven workflows that extend the carrier or distributor team.

  • New business and case processing
  • Underwriting case support
  • Commission processing, reconciliation, and administrative support, based on the agreed service scope
  • Policy servicing and policyholder support within agreed carrier-authorized workflows, scripts, and controls
  • Scalable operational support and service-level reporting based on the agreed engagement
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Decide which of these functions are core to your business

Before choosing a TPA, decide where your carrier actually competes. Product design, distribution relationships, underwriting philosophy, and the policyholder brand tend to sit at the core. The five functions below tend to be execution — necessary, expensive, and largely invisible to the market when they go well. Sort them into what you want to own outright, what you want to keep close but not build, and what someone else should run. Zinnia can take on any part of the last two groups, within the scope, authority, controls, and service levels agreed with your team.

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New Business

Process new business and case work, including policy issuance within agreed carrier procedures.

Policy Administration

Administer policies, maintain records, and manage correspondence and mail operations within the agreed scope.

In-Force Servicing

Handle policy servicing requests and policyholder support under carrier-authorized workflows and controls.

Claims Processing

Provide claims-processing support within carrier-defined authority, procedures, and controls. Claim decisions rest with the carrier unless authority is expressly delegated in the agreement.

Finance & Reporting

Run agreed finance operations, reconciliation, and operational reporting, with controls and review responsibilities defined with the carrier.

Choose a partner with proven experience at your scale

Administration problems tend to surface long after the contract is signed, so a partner’s track record deserves at least as much scrutiny as its pricing. Ask each candidate how long they have run this work, how many market cycles they have run it through, which distribution channels they support, and at what volume — then compare those answers, not the rate cards. Zinnia has administered life and annuity business for carriers over many years, across broker-dealer, BGA, IMO, wirehouse, bank, and direct-to-consumer channels. The figures below reflect a single year of that work.

850K
Approx. policies serviced per year
180K
Approx. new business policies issued per year
$35B
Approx. annual premium processed through TPA

Design the operating model before you transition the work

The operating model is a design decision, and it is far easier to make before a transition than to unpick afterward. Five choices carry most of the weight: what success looks like and who is accountable for what, how the work moves across, which systems it runs on, where the controls sit, and what you still see once the work leaves your building. Zinnia has worked through these choices with carriers of different sizes and in different markets, across a wide range of life and annuity product types, so we can say where each one tends to create friction later instead of starting from a blank page. The decisions stay yours.

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Define outcomes and responsibilities

Start with the outcomes you are trying to reach and how progress will be measured, then divide the work against them. Agree which activities Zinnia performs, the workflows included, the service levels expected, and the limits of the delegated authority; the carrier remains the insurer of record and retains the insurance risk, the underlying authority, and its oversight responsibilities. Name who handles exceptions, approves changes, and maintains control evidence, and set the escalation paths before any work moves.

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Transition planning and testing

Our teams plan the transfer of data, procedures, and operational knowledge together. We establish testing, reconciliation, and cutover activities, with readiness criteria and continuity measures agreed for the transition.

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Technology and integration model

Working with your technology and operations teams, we map the applications, policy data, documents, payments, and system connections the agreed workflows depend on. That shared view guides integration planning and testing.

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Financial and operational control

Together, we define the financial and operational controls within the agreed scope, including applicable reconciliation, payment controls, quality checks, and audit evidence. We assign responsibilities and escalation paths for exceptions.

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Visibility after outsourcing

We agree on service measures, reporting, and review routines with your team. These give both parties a shared view of work volumes, aging cases, exceptions, and performance against the expectations set for the engagement.

Plan the transition with your team

We build the transition plan with your operations, technology, and finance teams, covering the policies, procedures, data, and controls that need to move. Together, we establish milestones, readiness reviews, and escalation paths to support continuity while responsibilities transfer.

When the engagement also involves a system or block migration, we align the administration transition with the conversion and migration program, including its testing and reconciliation requirements.

Manage performance throughout the engagement

We review service performance with your team against the measures agreed at the outset. Workflow volumes, aging cases, exceptions, and unresolved issues help us identify where attention is needed and assign clear next steps.

Your team has visibility into the quality, audit, and control evidence within the agreed scope, including applicable financial reconciliation and payment controls.

Together, we review capacity and performance trends as business needs change, agreeing on priorities and any adjustments to scope, staffing, or service expectations.

Build on the systems that work alongside the administration

Administration is one part of the operating model. The systems on either side of it — where new business originates, where policies are held, where servicing requests arrive, and where a legacy block eventually moves — shape how much work reaches the TPA clean and how much arrives as an exception.

Each of the capabilities below stands on its own and works alongside the administration Zinnia runs for you, so the operating model has room to take on new products, channels, or blocks of business as your priorities change. Explore the ones that fit where your business is heading.

Related content

Inforce Servicing & Customer Experience

Podcasts

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S1E23 · 45:55

We Develop Products in Reverse Order — Eric Sondergeld on Insurance's Backwards Playbook

Eric Sondergeld — Managing Director at Greenwald Research, an actuary who spent years in market research at LIMRA before moving to custom research across life, annuities, and distribution — opens with the human cost of getting customer experience wrong. When his mother died in 2019, the life carrier bounced his claim between departments, sent a checklist of documents with an envelope too small to hold them, and never once expressed condolences. When his father passed this year, the same carrier had learned to say "I'm sorry" — but mailed a cryptic claim form and, this time, no envelope at all. From that story Eric builds his central argument: the industry develops products in reverse order, starting with the distribution it already has instead of the consumer it's supposed to serve, then stopping before it ever reaches the customer. Along the way he dismantles the idea of "best practices," explains why the industry's real superpower is copy-and-paste, names the third customer nobody designs for (the beneficiary), and gives a research veteran's read on synthetic respondents and AI moderation.

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S1E3 · 28:38

Where's My Money? Solving Insurance's Last Mile Problem

Moshe Golomb, CEO of Juice Financial, tackles the $10 trillion check problem still plaguing insurance. After 26 years digitizing payments across retail and banking, he's bringing Uber-like transparency to insurance disbursements — from death claims to annuity payments to international stablecoins. Plus: why 20% of insurance costs are fraud, and how open banking is changing the game.

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Discuss your third-party administration needs with Zinnia

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Build the mix of administration services and operational support your carrier needs. Work with Zinnia to define the workflows, responsibilities, controls, and service levels for your engagement.

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