Bestow’s quick feature integration helps client recover 5x more failed payments than previous benchmarks

The ask

We identified an issue a client was having which can be common for some types of life insurance products: failed payments. This can be a particularly sticky problem in the final expense space, since there are more payment-related variables.

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As little as 4% of failed payment attempts were being successfully recovered either by agents, customer support staff, or manually by customers. Just as crucially, these are binding payments, so improving payment recovery rate would translate directly to improving overall placement rate.

The solution

Our goal was to identify a solution that best married speed to market with overall value delivered. Ultimately, we decided on an AI-based solution integrated with our client’s existing preferred payment platform. The solution uses a machine learning mechanism to zero in on the perfect time to make the next payment attempt. 

For example, data suggests when certain payment methods (think specific credit card types, debit cards, social security payment cards) may be more likely to be successfully charged. AI detects these patterns and learns the best intervals to automatically retry certain payments. This is all done without the need for human intervention.

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Including customizations specific to insurance products and this life carrier’s unique needs, this integration took the Bestow team just two weeks to implement and launch.

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The results

The impact has been clear. Our client had been recovering as little as 4% of failed initial payments. In the first month following solution integration, the carrier successfully recovered a total of 20% of failed initial payments. That’s an improvement of up to 5x in recovered payment percentage.