SE2: Future-Proofing the Insurance Space

Gautam Thakkar, CEO

With over 350 million life and annuity policies in North America alone, there is a pressing need for insurance companies to efficiently manage these policies. Most life insurance carriers are still saddled with expensive and cumbersome legacy systems, exposing them to multiple technology and business risks, and their growth is hampered by the complexities involved in accessing data from these systems or converting to modern systems. SE2 was born out of Security Benefit, a premier retirement benefits company and industry leader with a 125-year history, to help solve this exact problem by offering a transformational Business- Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) solution that provides the insurance industry, access to comprehensive operations and a cutting edge and modern digital platform to not just drive efficiency in managing policies but also to accelerate product launch, and service new market segments.

In an attempt to modernize their capabilities, most organizations take a fragmented approach and focus only on the front-office systems without making the effort to modernize the archaic back-end systems. “SE2 started with modernizing the back end core architecture followed by building a modern user-friendly front end. This completely overhauled the Aurum platform giving the clients a truly digital experience, accelerating their transformational journey to become digital insurers,” states Gautam Thakkar, CEO of SE2. Their focus on transforming the back-end has enabled clients to make progress in launching innovative new products rapidly and to profitably acquire and service the underserved mid markets.

SE2’s modern digital chassis and industry first life and annuity APIs allow a unique plug and play ecosystem that drives innovation to solve business challenges

SE2 has heavily invested in technology with the aim to create a platform that helps future-proof the life and annuity insurance industry. “SE2’s modern digital chassis acts as an end-to-end platform to administer closed and open blocks, launch new products and its industry first APIs allow a unique plug-and-play eco-system that drives innovation and enables clients to solve business challenges with a direct-to-consumer or digital approach,” emphasizes Vinod Kachroo, CIO of SE2.

Digital Direct Life is their life-insurance-as-a-service solution that provides customers a streamlined, no-touch application process, which takes only minutes to complete. This platform is integrated with a unique and rich eco-system of Insur-techs and traditional solution providers that enables companies to develop and deploy industry standard capabilities at a rapid pace. To demonstrate the power of its plug-and-play architecture, SE2 developed a customized UI for a client within an hour by integrating Digital Direct Life with Amazon Alexa. SE2’s BPaaS offering is a comprehensive solution that converts policies from the client’s various legacy systems over to SE2’s multi-tenant platform leading to significant cost savings and a variablized cost structure by shifting from a CapEx to an OpEx model.

Digital Direct Life was built on SE2 Aurum—an end-to-end “as-a-service” platform—which encompasses everything an insurance carrier needs to run their core businesses. “A key aspect of our offering is the combination of comprehensive life insurance operational services along with our technology platform,” explains Ashish Jha, the CMO of SE2. The company ensures that nearly 2000 life and annuity experts are available to provide around-the-clock customer service.

The company today counts over 20 life insurance carriers as clients and has an unmatched track record of having converted over two million policies through its platform and currently has over $100 billion in assets under administration. However, what sets SE2 apart is that most of its clients also leverage SE2 to launch new products rapidly in the market. SE2 handles over 180,000 new business applications annually and supports over 30 new product launches in an 18 month period

The company remains focused on leveraging cutting-edge technology and innovations to revolutionize the life and annuity insurance industry. “We strike a perfect balance between maintaining legacy business for our clients and remaining at the forefront of technological innovation,” concludes Gautam Thakkar.