At Mutual of Omaha, we remain committed to meeting the needs of our business partners, producers and customers. Recently, you may have noticed some delays in the processing of Contracts and Appointments. Several factors have impacted our services levels, including:

• Significant delays in receiving criminal records from counties in nearly all states which has impacted how long our background checks are taking to complete
• Our transition to a remote work environment which has required us to adjust our workflow management and has resulted in processing delays
• Higher than normal call volumes

What We Are Doing:

We are making several changes focused on improving our service levels:

• We have established a priority for our requests. New business requests continue to be top priority and will be processed within 48 hours. Additional requests are prioritized as follows:
  • New arrangements/consolidations
  • New companies
  • State compliance regarding appointments
  • Licenses
  • Training
• We introduced a fast-track approach for background checks which expedites reviews where analysis shows there is minimal risk.
• We are notifying you when your appointment request has been received and a background is pending, and again to confirm appointment completion.
• We are working to design a more effective, marketer-friendly submission process. This will clearly identify the key information needed during the intake process, resulting in faster service times. Watch for a communication from Producer Services with more information.
• We are working on Saturdays to help reduce the current backlog.
• We made updates to our phone and email reply messaging to more accurately reflect the timeframe of work being processed.
• We are in the process of redeploying associates to better support our phone lines. Hold times should improve once we implement this change.

How You Can Help:

When possible, we encourage you to use self-service tools, as well as the information below to help reduce the number of inquiries coming into the Home Office.

• Producers and top-level marketers can utilize Sales Professional Access (SPA) to find status on producer appointments. Refer to our Express article on Checking Appointment Status.
  • Active appointment effective dates can be found on the National Insurance Producer Registry website. Some states also make this information available on their Department of Insurance websites.
  • Keep in mind that MT and PA are the only states that require an effective date prior to policy submission; our underwriting system will automatically place all other appointments into effective status during the underwriting process.
• Remember to send contracting requests (including requests to add a new product line to an existing contract) prior to submitting an application
• Remember that AML certification requirements must be completed
  • Mutual of Omaha accepts AML from five vendors: RegEd, Kaplan, WebCE, Sandi Kruise and LIMRA. Please note: First time LIMRA users must complete- Anti-Money Laundering for Insurance Producers.
  • The following AML renewal courses are accepted:
    • Elder Financial Abuse and Money Laundering
    • The Importance of Knowing your Customer
    • Money Laundering and Cybercrime

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to improve our service levels. If you have questions or concerns, please contact your Sales Director or Account Executive.
 

Contracting and Appointments – Service Level Update
 

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