A national life insurer cut policy issuance from 30 days to under 24 hours, without adding headcount.
A national life insurer with a policy issuance process running at over 30 days faced a competitive liability: brokers had options, and the gap in speed was costing book of business. One of our partners led a Lean Six Sigma-driven straight-through processing initiative that eliminated low-judgment handoffs and automated controls where discretion was not required. Policy issuance dropped to under 24 hours, and the operations team processed 80% more volume with the same headcount.
Outcomes
| Faster Issuance | Policy issuance cycle time reduced from over 30 days to under 24 hours for straight-through eligible cases. |
| More Volume | Operations team processed 80% more volume with no increase in headcount. |
| Better Broker Experience | Faster issuance and commission payment cycles improved the broker experience and strengthened book-of-business retention. |
| Reduced Manual Handoffs | Low-judgment handoffs were eliminated, while controls that did not require discretion were automated or removed. |
| Continuous Improvement | Lean Six Sigma methodology established a repeatable operational improvement posture beyond the initial program. |
The challenge
Policy issuance should have been straightforward. In practice, the process had accumulated years of manual handoffs: approvals waited on individual availability, documents moved between systems that could not communicate, and check steps had outlived their original purpose.
The timeline from application to active policy exceeded 30 days. Brokers placing business were making a judgment call on performance, and that number was not competitive. Worse, the model did not scale: processing the same volume as the business grew was going to require more people. Hiring was not going to fix it.
The approach
A 2Oaks partner led a value stream mapping exercise across the full policy issuance lifecycle. The goal was to find where time was actually going rather than where the documentation said it should be. The diagnostic revealed that most elapsed time was wait time: queues, disconnected systems, and approval steps that no longer reflected a genuine risk decision.
Working with the operations and technology teams, the partner applied Lean Six Sigma methodology to separate the controls that required human judgment from those that could be handled through straight-through processing. Some steps were automated with confidence. Others were removed entirely because they had been duplicating checks already happening upstream.
The impact
Policy issuance dropped from over 30 days to under 24 hours for straight-through eligible cases. The redesigned process allowed qualifying cases to move through issuance without manual intervention, while freed capacity was redirected to the cases that genuinely needed attention.
The operations team processed 80% more volume with no increase in headcount. Broker experience improved through faster issuance and commission payment cycles, and the organization established a repeatable Lean Six Sigma improvement posture beyond the initial program.
