Zebraquote.com and E-Financial announce merger

February 04, 2006 (PRLEAP.COM) Business News
Bellevue,WA - Zebraquote.com a leading online Term Life Insurance search engine announced today a new strategic partnership with E-Financial.com the leading provider of workflow, process automation, sales and content management solutions for the insurance industry, to merge its operations into the E-Financial corporate headquarters in Bellevue, WA and immediately start using ALISS V.3 system (automated life insurance sales system). Composed of both hardware and integrated document management software, ALISS V.3 will be utilized by Zebraquote.com to streamline operations, improve customer service and reduce underwriting time.

Founded in 1999, Zebraquote.com is among the nation's leading online search engines. Yet, like many companies, it has largely relied on a single medium—paper—to store, retrieve, transfer, to process the myriad information that flows through it on a daily basis. Explained Brian Fife CEO of Zebraquote.com, "For a company like ours that is really focused on delivering a high level of service, our paper-based system will simply not allow us to keep up with our rapid growth in the online Term Life Insurance market. E-Financial.com and ALISS V.3 will enable us to manage all of our information, including paper, in a totally electronic workflow that will change everything."

By streamlining and automating much of the labor-intensive clerical procedures associated with the underwriting and new business processes, the company will be able to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to underwrite a new customer and produce a policy.

Zebraquote.com’s decision to select ALISS V.3 was made after an exhaustive evaluation process by an internal team and outside consultants. The fact that current ALISS V.2 systems have been successfully installed and operating for over three years throughout the industry was also an important factor in their decision. "Ultimately, we chose E-Financial.com and their ALISS V.3 because we felt they were the best prepared," said Fife "They had the best experience in the insurance field and a product that would not only install like an off-the-shelf product, but would also allow us to easily make our own enhancements and customizations. We have a great deal of confidence in their ability to help us to achieve our goals and we’re thrilled to announce this very important merger and step in our growth." Mike Rowell CEO of E-Financial had this to say about the merger, “To have a company like Zebraquote.com with its extensive life insurance sales and marketing background positioned together with E-Financials industry leading technology platform is an exciting event in the growth of both companies”

The workflow market is in the midst of a transformation brought about by the impact of the Internet on traditional business models. Workflow is evolving from its document-centric roots into a middleware service for broad process management throughout the enterprise. It is becoming the enabling technology for building applications like customer relationship management and knowledge management. Underlying architectures are moving away from traditional client/server to Web centric. Expect the demands of e-business to have a dramatic impact on the workflow market in the coming year. E-business.com will drive the need for process-to-process linkage. Business-to-consumer commerce will foster the need for customer-driven and self-service workflow applications.


About E-Financial

Founded in 1998 E-Financial (http://www.efinancial.com) is a leading provider in work flow management tools specializing in large-scale workflow, process automation, content management, and e-Business solutions for the life insurance and financial services industries. The company provides consulting, training and project management services necessary to consistently achieve successful implementation. E-Financial.com and the ALISS system integrated approach delivers increased productivity, reduced processing cycle time and lower administrative expenses, while dramatically improving service levels.


About Zebraquote.com

Zebraquote.com was founded in 1999 (www.zebraquote.com) as an online life insurance search engine. Now one of the leading providers of online term life insurance content with a focus on work flow management. The roots of Zebraquote.com trace back to a focus on increased customer service levels. Since its beginnings Zebraquote.com has processed and mailed over 51,000 life insurance applications using their technology driven approach.