Ep #366: Can We Stop Hating RFPs? - With Steve Overton

The ShiftShapers Podcast

This week's episode features a conversation with Steve Overton, Co-founder, and CEO at Plansight. RFPs are difficult on advisors and extra hard of carriers who may or may not know how they are being represented to clients. Additionally, RFPs are time-consuming, difficult to decipher, and sometimes written with a particular carrier or plan in mind. Technology is being used to smooth out that process and make the RFP experience simpler and more equitable for all constituencies.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• 03:31 Introducing consistency into the Really Frustrating Process
• 06:05 The RFP process fosters biases and can leave carriers misrepresented
• 09:14 Innovating RFPs with real-time technology
• 16:24 Advisor benefits with using Plansight

Quotes:

03:54 “The acronym obviously means request for proposal. A lot of people call it really frustrating process or really frantic process and you’re kind of putting everything together at the last minute.”

05:05 “We’re working to bring in some consistency into the process as well. Because you imagine, it’s tough for the broker but it’s also tough on the carrier.”

08:22 “Obviously there are some consistencies but the most consistent thing we found was none of these are all that great. You’re taking a lot of information and you’re distilling it down to a decision-making tool.”

10:34 “You can’t see who is who but you can see, you know, benefit features and you can see cost. And then you can make a judgment. Hey, can I get more competitive on this?”

17:18 “You might have 10 quotes or 2,000 quotes. You kind of narrow it down to what you want to present and you hit a little button and it builds all of the spreadsheet presentations for you.”