Sun Life looks for partnerships to achieve digital excellence

August 4, 2022 6:30 AM

Sun Life headquarters, Wellesley, Massachusetts

Digital Insurance spoke with Ted Phillips, vice president of the Distribution Digital Center of Excellence (DDCOE) at Sun Life, the Toronto-based financial services company specializing in life insurance and asset management. Phillips joined from Maxwell Health on its acquisition by Sun Life in 2018. Together, the two companies then launched a benefits technology solution in 2019. Since then, Phillips has led the company’s efforts through DDCOE to modernize its technology, both internally and with the help of partnerships. More recently, Sun Life partnered with health insurance and benefits API platform Ideon to streamline enrollment in its group insurance benefits. Phillips speaks about that partnership and DDCOE’s approach to technology.

How does Sun Life’s Distribution Digital Center balance development of technology in-house with development through partnerships?

In some cases, our clients have platforms that they've been on for a while and they like, and so we want to be able to put that client first, meet them where they are.

It's almost case by case from a partnership standpoint that we make the determination whether this is the right set for some of that in-house development, given the needs of that particular platform or the needs of clients on that platform. There’s over 200 platforms that we connect to with traditional EDI [electronic data interchange]. One group can't balance all of that for the diversity in our client base.

We want to make sure we're looking at that client, looking at the needs of that client, what connectivity and what functionality they need with their particular platform, and then balance that out, depending on where the expertise lies.

Are there experiences from your prior role at Maxwell Health that helped you figure out issues in your current role?

At Maxwell, I was in a role which was at a technology company, a benefits administration company, where I interfaced with all of the other carriers. I worked with large enterprise relationships as well as within the marketplace. So, I had a lot of experience there and being able to see the market, see how it's evolving and then continue to see how we can push it to get everything easier and connected.

How wide is the variety of functions you need to build for prospective partners to serve their clients?

The scope can be very broad. Under connectivity, it’s making sure that administration of a benefits platform or HCM [human capital management] platform goes smoother and easier for the client. It can get complicated without data flowing back and forth. It really falls into a handful of buckets. The first one is plan design and making sure the appropriate plan from what we sold the client on the insurance end is accurately represented in the platform. That in itself can lead to a whole host of problems if it's not done correctly. So being able to connect that directly and make sure that it's correct.

The next layer is enrollment and eligibility. As you're getting that data and as a client’s employees are making those elections, they're flowing correctly from that administration platform into the Sun Life systems. We need to make sure the information we have about our clients is matching what's in the platforms where they're making those elections and tying those together.

With the benefits ecosystems that Sun Life works with, what can technology make possible?

The benefits ecosystem has grown and it's really complex. You have platforms that are administering benefits. You have point solutions that may tackle one aspect of something like proposals, and then you have everything between. What we're seeing is that we need to make HR's job a little bit easier in connecting in a lot of those different places in the ecosystem. We can do it with connectivity, APIs and making sure that we have the in-house team that can support that, but then also partner with an established technology platform to see the opportunities.

Even after digitally transforming an operation for a benefits administrator handling their employee insurance, it’s always very complex to get it set up. It can be almost as complex as whatever legacy tech they had in place just because of the nature of what's being covered. In the end, the goal for us is to simplify. We're the insurer. We have the insurance products, so we need to make sure that we're talking and solutioning the right insurance products for that particular employer.

Five or 10 years ago, you just made sure it was the right product for that employer. Now we have to make sure that the delivery of that product fits as well. So we have to make sure our products fit on the particular platform that employer has. We work a lot on which products fit and which don’t because all platforms for benefits, administration, HCM, and so on might have different functionality. We want the right insurance product delivered in the right way on the platform.

To that end, how is this concept of connectivity carried out?

We get the right insurance products for that particular employer. We know that they fit on that particular platform that employer's using now. We make sure we build these pipes and these connections to make it easier for that HR administrator, that benefit administrator to manage those products and for those employees to use those products.

What are your plans for the partnership with Ideon?

We’ve been developing our capabilities [with Ideon] for the last several months now. We’re testing and not out in the market yet, but we are very close to that. We’re balancing working with Ideon with some of our internal capabilities, because this connectivity piece within the market is just so important. In some cases, our in-house capabilities that we're developing either from a connectivity or an API standpoint are helpful. To make sure we can really cover what we need to for clients, the partnership with Ideon is bringing value.