Prudential Financial Appoints Third-Party Brokers Using Electronic Application

Prudential Financial Inc., Newark, N.J., has introduced an automatic, online licensing application for brokers seeking appointment to sell the company’s insurance and annuity products. The electronic data collection tool, called Online Confidential Data Sheet (CDS), was developed by Indianapolis-based BISYS Education and Licensing Services for Prudential. The Online CDS streamlines the traditional, paper-based appointment process and greatly improves brokers’ speed to market."Prudential’s new electronic application is on the cutting edge in several respects," says George Hanley, senior vice president, chief compliance officer. "The Online CDS makes Prudential easier for brokers to do business with, while taking the company to the next generation of appointment processing and online records management. All are important advantages in today’s environment."

The Online CDS can be used by individual financial professionals completing their own appointment applications or by broker-dealers and firms seeking appointments on behalf of their producers. This paperless appointment request offers brokers the following advantages:

Elimination of delivery time required for a manual request.

• A shortened appointment cycle time–from as long as several days to as little as one–minimizing lost business opportunities.
• A tailored questionnaire requiring completion of only those sections pertinent to the individual applicant.
• Electronic authorization eliminating the need for wet signature.
• Automated license validation thereby eliminating the burden on the producer to provide a license copy .
• E-mail to the producer allowing for instant notification of appointment confirmation.

Prudential partnered with BISYS, a provider of business process outsourcing solutions for the financial services sector, to tailor the application. BISYS Education and Licensing Services created the Compliance Management System (CMS) in 2003 as an enterprise-wide licensing solution for carriers, broker-dealers and agencies. Prudential’s Confidential Data Sheet expands the powerful CMS with added data collection functionality.