What do you do when the worst happens? What do you do in the case of the death of a relative, one who may be the sole breadwinner of the home?

What can you do for your family if the worst happens to you? How can you take care of the people who are left behind?

This is the purpose of life-insurance policies – to provide an answer to these hard questions.

While some may think insurance only benefits companies and not their customers, insurance is actually a plan that would benefit the ones you care about most, by allowing you to trade the risk of a disastrous loss in the future against an investment made today.

But for many, insurance is out of reach. Expensive plans with high premiums and the perceived pressure to buy from agents, common in traditional insurance models, may deter prospects.

Republic Life Insurance was established in 2021 and went live on its online platform in February this year.

Its main goal is to bring the peace of mind that comes with insurance coverage to those who are in need, but may not be able to access it.

Speaking to Business Day at its office on Murray Street, Woodbrook, Robert Soverall, managing director of Republic Life Insurance, said it is the first of its kind, providing a full, direct-to-customer insurance experience with an end-to-end distribution model to Republic Bank customers and non-Republic Bank customers alike. With no agents, low premiums and simple, easy, applications, made on its digital platform, Soverall said Republic Life is expanding the reach of the insurance sector to cover those it could not cover before.

[caption id="attachment_1068421" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Robert Soverall, managing director of Republic Life in his office at Ariapita Avenue on March 6. - Photo by Jeff K. Mayers[/caption]

“Because of the simple way we are bringing it across, we think people will understand what they are getting, the need for life insurance – and hopefully it will encourage people,” he said. “People who think it is too expensive or it is not for them, we are expanding to make sure we reach them.”

Making insurance easy

Sabrina Nath, manager - life insurance expansion and implementation, said Republic Life sought to find out the "pain points" for potential insurance customers through focus groups held a few years ago.

“Across all the cohorts, one of the main pain points was that agents keep coming to push business on to them that may not necessarily be what is best for them, but sometimes would be best for commissions,” she said. “A lot of the cohorts also wanted that digital interaction; but they also wanted the flexibility to reach out to someone and talk to someone before they make a lifelong financial commitment.”

She said while Republic Life has several channels, including live calls, e-mail or a chatbot, the digital platform, republiclifett.com, is its main portal.

When customers go onto the site, they can select their plan and the website will provide a list of questions including age, gender and smoker's status.

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