Kelley Rating (one asterisk = lowest, five asterisks = highest):
- Ease of navigation, design of interface and learning curve ****
- Instructional documentation and help system ***
- Carries out the goal of the product as advertised *****
- Overall usefulness ****
The TOLI Vault (provided by The TOLI Group) is a system that provides an online facility for life insurance policy management and monitoring. It stores policies and other documents (for example, wills and trusts), provides key date reminders, tracks communications, and compares established policy design parameters to current performance. It’s designed for ongoing monitoring and tracking of specific information and performance for individual, corporate and trust owned life insurance policies through performance guidelines, tracking and alerts. It tracks the lapse age-duration period, analyzes the death benefit coverage required, addresses premium scheduled payments, furnishes policy performance and expected crediting rate and addresses carrier performance with the desired Comdex rating.
The TOLI Vault provides policy reporting and carrier monitoring, as well as a wider functionality of client engagement and policy management on a broad basis, and identifies policy issues that affect long-term success by addressing the clients’ needs and goals. Family member and advisor access may be assigned. It will accommodate needs and preferences that range from sophisticated analytics and measuring tools to basic policy administrative and maintenance applications. The publisher asserts that it performs policy-holder advocacy through regular review to forestall lapses and provides professional management of irrevocable life insurance trust policies.
The TOLI Vault furnishes displays of enabled users, alerts that have been automatically sent, reminders sent, scheduled reports and data requests. It offers detailed policy information reports comparing the original design to the current structure, displays of each policy compared to established guidelines and a list of all notifications sent for a specific client. Screens referred to as “dashboards” provide graphically displayed summary information and detailed lists related to policies to which the viewer is given access.
The publisher advises that a similar version with corresponding functionality to provide for the management and monitoring of annuity contracts is forthcoming.
What’s It All About?
TOLI Vault includes policy management, policy monitoring, and alerts. As stated by the publisher, its services include:
- Establishing design guidelines for each policy;
- Gathering policy information;
- Monitoring policy performance;
- Sending policy management reminders;
- Furnishing policy reports;
- Monitoring carriers;
- Storing documents;
- Providing vault access for advisors and policy contacts;
- Tracking and auditing policy duties; and
- Putting policy assurance protocols in place to ensure policy information is updated in a timely manner
The TOLI Vault inventories and maintains information, decisions, and needed actions relating to each policy serviced. Its “Advocacy Process” determines monitoring guidelines, gathers policy information and values, implements policy performance and monitoring, creates policy-specific notifications, updates policy information and values and implements policy management guidelines and product holding reviews. It produces a “Completion Alert” that lists policy design considerations (contrasting original and current policy design), policy features, overall portfolio features and objectives and other design features. It also issues an alert as to incomplete policy data, produces a release of information letter for the carrier, sends out performance alerts when policy monitoring guidelines change, produces client specific action reminders, notifies policy servicing agents when policy information is needed (such as a current in force illustration) as well as annual update requests, sends review notices to clients and provides clients with information, portfolio design and objectives and risk tolerance to review and update as needed
The TOLI Vault’s Policy Holder Advocacy Protocols require, at a minimum, annual policy information updates and reporting; with client guideline reviews and policy product comparisons to be done every three years. This system is designed to help the clients hold their agents/advisors accountable.
How it Works
The TOLI Vault Policy Governance Platform (available to law firms, banks, trust departments, family offices and professional advisors who have purchased their own TOLI Vault) opens with the Portfolio Monitoring Screen. This screen offers a list and review of all the policies in your Vault. From it you may access client or policy information. It also presents overall graphic views of policy anniversaries, administration fees, policy status, premium payments, premium gifts, policy types, ownership types and carriers. From each of these graphic views you may drill down to more detail. (At the top of each screen are icons reflecting alerts for payment, lapse, conversion, carrier and protocol, from which you may open screen with detailed information on each concern.)
The left side of the screen has navigation icons for Administration, Portfolio Monitoring, Client Management, Notification Tracking and Client View (a different navigational screen with links to the video library, a left pane listing the same navigational areas and a drop down menu for selecting the client you want to work on). The use of each of these areas is discussed in the user guide available on each screen.
Under Administration, you may select TVAP (This is the advisor’s and policy contact portal of the TOLI Vault, which has a navigational screen with links to carrier monitoring and video library pages at the top. The left hand pane lists consolidated analysis links for policies that they have been granted access to, with a drop down menu for selecting additional links for these clients.), Site Setup, Add Clients, Manage Clients, Control Panel, Policy Reviews, CRM (a section for setting up tasks and reminders), TOLI Vault Implementation Procedure and Dynamic Reports. From Manage Client, you may view any client by selecting a client from the drop down list, which will display the input screen for the client design guidelines.
The TVIP walks you through the process of adding a client, entering policy information and implementing work with that client, including monitoring guidelines and establishing who’s responsible for the ongoing collecting of client and policy data for this specific client. It also produces a report as to policy details, related reminders, persons with vault access, data requests made, policy and information alerts, archive access permissions, policy information and structure, policy monitoring guidelines and product analysis. It then produces a confirmation report, which shows the desired control settings for individuals that currently have or will have vault access, data requests previously sent or to be sent and individuals that will receive policy and information alerts as well as archive access permissions. It also displays a summary for each of this client’s policies, which consist of the newly-created or currently-stored policy monitoring guidelines, policy information currently housed in the vault and product analyses. Once the confirmation report has been reviewed and accepted, the TVIP can be executed.
Site Setup allows you to enter the details of services available for policy data collection, life insurance advisory and premium financing, advocacy settings (including policy design and policy information), policy status information to be active, reminders of various policy-related activities, archives, communications and menu layout. It gives you the ability to design the TOLI Vault’s Governance Platform around your specified criteria.
Add Client is where you may enter new client information on the policy type, design considerations (death benefit guarantees, lowest premium, cash accumulation, etc.) and risk tolerance.
Client Management displays for a given client a list of policies and ownership of each, along with status information reflecting total policies, carriers, products, death benefits, premiums and cash values. You may click on any individual policy to bring up the Individual Client Management screen displaying information (lapse age, death benefit, premium, policy performance and carrier performance) on that policy and actions to be taken. This screen also displays whether each element of the policy is performing in the desired range, acceptable range or is unacceptable.
From this screen you may proceed to screens for management of the policy and for monitoring actions taken with reference to the policy. Under Management, a Tasks screen lists the persons to whom various actions concerning the policy have been assigned. From Management, you may also access information as to the insured, beneficiaries and trustees, as well as archives, notes, reports and a check register.
Notification Tracking brings up a screen from which you may view details of reminders, updates, policy monitoring, data missing and reports. The center of the screen displays a list of the policies related to the client you are working on, from which you may review the Policy Design Guidelines, Policy Information Request (insureds, other policy information and policy advisors contact data) and Policy Update Request (policy monitoring as to policy data, actions with regard to it and beneficiaries) for each policy related to the client with dates (as applicable) of when the information was sent (and to whom), when read and when updated. Policy Design Guidelines provides ownership, trustee and grantor information, along with a detailed report of design considerations and the client’s risk tolerance profile.
Dynamic Reports allows you to select the information you want reported for Trust Ownership, Insurance Agent and Policy Beneficiary, Policy Holder, Product, Contract and Policy (death benefit, premiums, cash value, loans, cost, etc.)
What About Help and Support?
On any screen, you may click the question mark icon at the top right to view the user guide. This guide covers getting started, policy governance, administration client view, vault consolidation, clients, my vault, TOLI videos and a FAQ. It may be word searched. The publisher’s website provides a knowledgebase and FAQ as well.
Support is also furnished by email or phone.
Where Do You Get This Facility?
TOLI Vault is available from:
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The TOLI Vault Group Westlake, OH 44145 |
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Phone: 866 998 8654
Website: http://toligroup.com/toli/default.aspx
Email: email form at http://www.toligroup.com/contact.aspx
Pricing:
Licensing fees (includes TOLI Vault administration, software platform and client access portal) are $250 per month and $1.00 per policy. The TOLI Vault also has the capacity to arrange customized pricing as circumstances warrant.
Data Collection (administrative service, including gathering of current in-force illustration and inputting of current policy data) is $100 per request or $50 per request with agent of record.
Policy Governance Solutions (Professional service, including data collection, comprehensive policy assessment, product marketplace comparison and product acquisition process) are $350 per request or $175 per request with agent of record).
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Bottom Line
The TOLI Vault provides detailed policy information assembly and analysis, along with broad evaluation of policy performance compared with policy objectives.
Trusts & Estates magazine is pleased to present the monthly Technology Review by Donald H. Kelley—a respected connoisseur of the software and Internet resources wealth management advisors use to further their practices.
Kelley is a lawyer living in Highlands Ranch, Colo., and is of counsel to the law firm of Kelley, Scritsmier & Byrne, P.C. of North Platte, Neb. He is the co-author of the Intuitive Estate Planner Software, (Thomson – West 2004). He has served on the governing boards of the American Bar Association Real Property Probate and Trust Section and the American College of Tax Counsel. He is a past regent and past chair of the Committee on Technology in the Practice of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.
Trusts & Estates has asked Kelley to provide his unvarnished opinions on the tech resources available in the practice today. His columns are edited for readability only. Send feedback and suggestions for articles directly to him at [email protected].
