One of our biggest learnings from building Ladder is how contextual life insurance purchases are. These decisions are often driven by major life milestones: getting married, having a child, or buying a home.
Ladder intentionally partners with trusted consumer brands to enable a seamless term life insurance policy purchase experience. By leveraging our integration capabilities we are able to offer customers the right choice, at the right place and at the right time. That enables us to democratize insurance and provide families protection that is simple to understand and easy to use.
Appointed vs. non-appointed partners
We work in two primary models with our partners: appointed and non-appointed.
Appointed partners are licensed insurance distributors who have deeper integrations with us. They receive commission for each referred customer who is issued a life insurance policy through Ladder. Because of the deeper integrations, they have access to more data and are allowed a broader scope of activities, which allows them to target the right customers and sell more effectively.
Non-appointed partners are lead referral partners. Our partner is compensated for actions by the referred customer. These include clicks, starting an application, completing an application, and verification of ID, to name a few. Compared to appointed partners, non-appointed partners are limited in the degree of integration, the scope of activities, and data-sharing arrangements.
The appointed partner advantage
Over time, we have seen that appointed partners enjoy sustainable advantages and are more effective in achieving business volumes, enabling them to earn over 50% more revenue. There are a few reasons appointed partners have greater success, such as access to data and co-branding opportunities:
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- More effective selling Appointed partners have an increased scope on marketing techniques. Unlike non-appointed partners, they are able to sell and solicit with potential customers. Appointed partners also have the ability to recommend coverage based on the customer’s needs, which makes it easier for the customer to make the right decision. Appointed partners have the ability to develop and share life insurance content that attracts more customers through their platform.
- Sustainable, long-term opportunities: Appointed partners get paid only when a policy is issued to the customer. Their incentives are fully aligned with ours, facilitating a more sustainable long-term partnership.
- Access to more premium data: Appointed partners are able to achieve more effective targeting of prospective customers and have more learning opportunities to optimize outcomes due to access to more premium data.
- Better regulatory alignment: As licensed distributors, appointed partners have the requisite regulatory approvals from the state insurance regulation bodies, which minimizes risks to the partnership. As regulators focus more on insuretechs, there could be more restrictions on scope of marketing activities for non-appointed partners.
- Co-branding opportunities: Appointed partners enjoy opportunities to develop more co-branded user flows. resulting in better policy conversion outcomes. These co-branded user flows are mostly developed by us, enabling appointed partners to enjoy the benefits with minimal effort at their end.
The proof lies in the results
We have had several partners move from a non-appointed model to an appointed model. Switching from a non-appointed model to an appointed model results in a temporary haircut in economics for our partners, to the extent of up to 50% in some cases. This temporary haircut is the result of teething troubles from the switch. During this time, we work with our partner to implement API connections, build co-branded user flows, improve placements, and leverage insights from data.
As a result of these changes, the partner ends up making substantially more revenue from the partnership, generally within the first six months of the transition. On the whole, appointed partners end up making about 50% more year-on-year upon transition. Out of all of our partners who have switched to an appointed partner model, none have switched back to becoming a non-appointed partner.
If you are interested in partnering with us or keen to learn more about our partnership models, reach out to us at bd@ladderlife.com.
