Palm, Inc. announced today that agents of Primerica Financial Services, a subsidiary of Citigroup, Inc., are using 4,000 Palm handhelds and smartphones to complete insurance applications in the comfort of a client's own home. Primerica developed its own customized Palm OS(R) application -- called TurboApps -- to run on a variety of Palm devices, including the latest Palm Tungsten(TM) handhelds and Palm Treo(TM) smartphones.
Primerica provides its 6 million clients with financial products and services, such as term life insurance, mutual funds, variable annuities, loans and long-term care insurance. With up to 60 percent of applications pouring in the last week of each month, processing the high volume of paperwork was very challenging.
The company decided it needed a paperless process and a powerful mobile device. Primerica chose to develop on the Palm OS platform in part because the majority of its agents and executives already were users of Palm products, ranging from handheld devices that were primarily used to organize calendar, contacts and personal information to advanced all-in-one devices that include email and cell phone capabilities. Familiarity with Palm devices made the learning curve virtually flat.
In addition, the Palm OS platform is flexible enough to expertly handle applications customized for the needs of particular industries, from healthcare to finance. Palm handhelds and smartphones met Primerica's system requirements for powerful, portable, affordable devices with the ability to handle the customized TurboApps application. Now sales agents can synchronize large volumes of sensitive information, completing the application process in just minutes. In the past, this process took several days.
"We needed a technology that could handle an extensive scope of information and also ease the processing burden on our agents," said Tom Swift, executive vice president of field technology at Primerica. "With TurboApps running on Palm handhelds and smartphones, our agents have access to the applications necessary to get the job done. Being able to process apps quicker with fewer mistakes is a win for clients, agents and the company."
Palm handhelds and smartphones running the custom-built TurboApps application help Primerica agents do the following:
Minimize errors and incomplete applications by guiding them through the process;
Provide clients with the best service possible;
Keep client information more secure;
Save time by not having to enter redundant data or wait for postal deliveries;
Speed turnaround time;
Submit applications as soon as their next synchronization; and
Submit client payments faster.
"By empowering 4,000 agents with a mobile application like TurboApps, Primerica is enabling an ever-increasing mobile workforce to dramatically increase productivity," said Tara Griffin, vice president, enterprise sales, Palm, Inc. "Palm is committed to equipping organizations such as Primerica with mobile solutions that raise the bar for efficient business processes and quality customer service."
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