We plan to post the October 2003 Internet monthly update to our five monthly update websites on Thursday, September 25th.
The October 2003 disk update will be processed Thursday, September 25th and Friday, September 26th.
Disks will be shipped Friday, September 26th. You should have the October Update in your office by Tuesday, September 30th. Unless you have made arrangements to purchase your diskettes, please return your August disks ONLY AFTER you have successfully installed this September 2003 Update. August disks are your backup in case you should have problems installing the September edition.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Subscribers who are receiving disks can save up to $80 per year by switching to updates by Internet. Please read the last part of this bulletin for full details. Don't wait for your next subscription invoice to make the change. Compulife will bonus your subscription renewal deadline for switching from disks to internet.
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: For disk update subscribers renewing after January 1, 2004 the annual subscription price for receiving monthly updates by disk will be $20 per year higher. Prices for internet updates will be unchanged, and will be $100 per year less.
The refile option for Pick 12 has been enhanced allowing two optional ways for the program to choose products for your client. The second option is the default method which is the method that has been used up to this point. That option permits you to change the client information and when the program re-files to Pick 12 select the best class of premium available based upon the new client information that was entered.
However, this creates a problem for those who wanted to show multiple classes of the same product. For example, assume that you wanted a spreadsheet showing the preferred plus, preferred and standard non- smoking premiums for the very same product. If you changed the face amount, but left the client set to preferred plus, and then wanted to refile, the program automatically put in the preferred plus rates for each product entry because the program assume that you wanted preferred plus as the rate class.
The new option, which appears as the first option in the "Refile Options" window, will permit you to refile so that the exact same premium class for each product is maintained in the Pick 12.
It should be noted that there will be a further enhancement to the refile option that is not yet functional. If you use the Health Analyzer, the program will re-file the least expensive premium rate class for the product, which is available based upon the health criteria that you entered.
To go with that coming option will be a "Health Class Report" which will explain what classes were rejected by the program and the reasons why they were rejected. If the health criteria for that product was not provided by the company, the system will still pick the lowest premium available for the class selected. The health analysis report will indicate that health analysis was not performed for that company/product.
Within the "List or Modify Product Database" option is an option called "Select a Group of Companies to Quote". This allow you to select a smaller group of companies to quote than what is provided by Compulife. If you select a group of 10 companies, and then decided that you temporarily want to quote all companies or see other companies, you previously had to go back to the "Select a Group of Companies to Quote", turn on all or those companies you wanted to see, do your work and then go back to once again select the 10 companies that you wanted.
We have now added a new option to the "Display Product Comparison" which allows you to "Quote All Companies" at the click of a button. When you click on "Quote All Companies" your comparison will re-display with all the companies included. Until you change that back, or until you leave and re-enter the program, the "Quote All Companies" selection will be remembered. Once you do leave the program and then return, the selected group of companies will be activated again.
Some users are connected to the Internet by a network server and they access the internet using what is referred to as a "proxy setting". The option to use the proxy server has now been added to "options" on the Red Master Menu. Please DO NOT USE this option unless you know what you are doing.
Please remember that each subscriber to Compulife is entitled to one free listing at the www.term4sale.com web site.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You are NOT automatically listed at the site. You must request your listing.
We do not assume all subscribers want to be listed because we know that there are those who do not want to be listed, for a variety of reasons. Therefore, please check to make sure you have a listing if you want to be listed.
At some point we plan to add some testimonial letters at our www.compulife.com web site where you can see the favorable experiences a number of our subscribers have had by being listed. While no one is inundated with telephone calls, a consumer calling a Compulife subscriber is generally a pretty good insurance prospect. Some agents have called to say they have sold sizable policies.
On July 1st Compulife cancelled its referral program which allows an agent to receive 6 free months of Compulife by referring a new customer.
Compulife's new advertising campaign will focuses on paying a prospective customer $5 just to TRY our software. Full details are now available at our website www.compulife.com.
It is clear already that this marketing concept is a winner. A number of agents have already acted to claim their $5 and a number of those have taken advantage of the 25% discount and purchased our software. This despite this offer is only appearing in our September print ads.
Increasing the number of Compulife subscribers is good for all subscribers. It gives Compulife additional revenue to initiate product improvements more quickly, and permits us to control our individual pricing.
In July we introduced a new version of our program which offers a number of the new options that we had been promising. With that completed we are now moving forward with implementation of our multi- life quotes for up to 5 people.
Progress on that improvements was slowed by the introduction of new comparison categories for our U.S. subscribers. With that completed, work again will re-focus on the 5 life comparison.
Some companies permit a discount for husband and wife when they buy policies at the same time, while others do it also for business partners. Many that allow the discount for business partners will allow the discount for more than 2 partners and so the multi-life comparison button for non-spouse will eventually ask how many clients to do the comparison for and give the total premiums for that group. You will be able to file that group of 2, 3, 4 or 5 individuals into the Pick 12.
Once this function is completed our multi-life option will be wrapped.
For those who update by Internet, Compulife has gone to great lengths to provide you with redundancy in our websites. Our main website is:
However, we keep another completely separate website, on a completely different server, in a completely different country, at:
Whatever we update to compulife.com, we also update to compulife.us or compulife.cc. If one website goes down, for whatever reason, the other is ready to serve you. That includes both monthly and mid-month updates.
For those doing monthly updates by Internet, we rely on three other websites to supply monthly updates. These are automatically checked and used by our automatic Internet update software.
For those not wanting to return disks there are two ways to eliminate the problem.
1. Switch to obtaining monthly updates by Internet.
Not only will you eliminate the expense and hassle of returning disks, you will save $80 per year in subscription fees.
To switch to Internet monthly updates, go to our webpage www.compulife.com and select the last menu choice "Forms, applications, instruction tutorials, etc." Under the section "License Agreements", the third license is the "Internet Update Endorsement". Print the endorsement. Once you have it, please read it carefully, especially the part where you agree that you have successfully downloaded and processed our "mid-month updates". If you haven't done that before, call us and we'll be happy to take you through the procedure. It's easy.
2. Disk Purchase Program
The other way to avoid returning the disks and the disk box each month is to pre-purchase them for $21 per year ($1.75 per month). Once you do that you can keep them for future reference, throw them away or return them for a credit (once each year) when you are invoiced for the following year. $21 costs you less than mailing back disks each month.