StoneRiver has announced that SECU Life is now in production with three StoneRiver solutions: LifePortraits for illustrations, LifeApply for electronic application submission, and LifeSuite for automated underwriting.

SECU is the first credit union client for StoneRiver and, through its life insurance company, represents an effective model to simultaneously deploy three solutions.

The successful implementation required only 10 months, going from contract in January 2013 to production use in November 2013. StoneRiver was selected due to its best-of-suite, pre-integrated solutions coupled with the company’s proven industry expertise.

Commenting on the StoneRiver decision and implementation, Stacey Waddell, Senior Vice President of Member Insurance Services at SECU and Chief Operating Officer of SECU Life, said, "As a start-up insurance company we wanted a solid and proven set of solutions, but we also knew that we needed a provider with the expertise that would help us get to a production environment quickly. StoneRiver has been a great organization to work with and has helped us every step of the way."

Waddell continued, "The feedback on the systems has been very positive. Our agents and our operations staff are excited about the ease of use of this intuitive software solution. StoneRiver’s systems have helped us provide a more convenient solution to our members’ need for life insurance and annuities."

During the implementation, SECU was issuing life insurance products through another insurance company. Lengthy underwriting decisions and no straight-through process left SECU eagerly awaiting the dramatic improvement in processing with the StoneRiver solutions.

A sampling of the benefits SECU Life is experiencing with the new StoneRiver environment now in production include:

Underwriting decisions in less than 3 minutes, resulting in added convenience and cost savings;

Straight-through processing which guides the agents through each step of the application process, including workflow prompts; and

A business model and platform to support SECU Life’s existing 1,700 branch agents.

Jim Woodward, Senior Vice President Life Carrier Solutions with StoneRiver, noted, "We are very excited about the success of the SECU Life project. Not only was it a quick implementation, but deploying 3 solutions at once continues to be a model our clients leverage to realize quick value propositions. Leading the market with high levels of intrinsic value in StoneRiver solutions delivered exactly to client demands is very important to us."