The market for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software dedicated to financial advisors has welcomed a new player. At its helm, a veteran of this niche who believes his project addresses advisors' needs that he was unable to meet in a previous life at Kronos Technologies – nor could his competitors, he contends.
When Jean-François St-Pierre sold Kronos Technologies to Equisoft in 2018, he says he already sensed he would return to the life insurance industry. Two years later, he received three calls convincing him that his work was not yet finished. In September 2021, he successfully persuaded two partners, Guillaume Lorquet and Jean-Christophe St-Pierre, to launch the Laylah project with him. All three are shareholders.
CRM solutions such as Equisoft Connect or Salesforce currently dominate the market. Several other players offer partial solutions.
Data management first
How does Innovations Laylah Inc.'s application differ from that offered by Kronos Technologies (now Equisoft Connect)?
"The approach starts from a different angle," says Jean-François St-Pierre, reflecting on his time at Kronos Technologies. "At Kronos, we tackled application development from the angle of functionalities needed by advisors in their daily work. Over the years, we realized that incomplete data prevented them from doing their jobs properly, regardless of the application's features," he explains.
At Kronos, St-Pierre says he attempted to solve this issue, but data from multiple sources created more problems than solutions. "Managing duplicates, the possibility of transferring clientele, and many other data management functionalities were not well handled," he says.
"Laylah's distinction is that we first created a data management application," says St-Pierre. The three partners prioritize offering advisors a unified and complete view of client data. "Afterwards, it will be possible to add functionalities to assist them in their daily tasks," he adds.
The Laylah team aims to consolidate data from various sources and secure it so that subsequent entries do not overwrite the initial data. "Today, we offer an application capable of managing client data, modifying it, and keeping track of everything that happens. Users can then share this data with other systems or Laylah users," St-Pierre explains.
Sharing or retrieving
He notes that a Laylah user can choose to share data with other users, such as a managing general agent or the client, with their advisor. He clarifies that users can stop sharing their data with another user. "The data then returns to them when they sever ties with another user, and it is deleted from the other user's Laylah application," he details.
The application aims to provide advisors with an overview of their clientele. They can also share their data with other advisors. "The advisor will have a complete view of their client and can share the data with other market participants, such as advisors, MGAs, and insurers. Then, the advisor can layer on the functionalities needed for their client management software," St-Pierre says.
If one of the participants working with the advisor — client, insurer, or MGA — does not agree to share their data, the advisor cannot get a complete view of the client's portfolio. "Our goal has been to make a solution that’s available to all market participants," he states.
Duplicate management
Alain Racine, Product Owner at Laylah and a former advisor, demonstrated the application in a video. Racine’s role at the company is to act as a translator between the user and the developer. "Because data is scattered in various places, causing you to waste a lot of time, we have developed two important functions: the synchronization of insurance and investments and the automated management of duplicates," Racine begins.
He says that Laylah synchronizes information from the majority of insurers and major investment brokers. Racine says that Laylah automatically groups duplicates with a 97 per cent efficiency rate. It does not merge the data, thereby avoiding deletions. Users can, if necessary, undo the groupings when they realize they involve two different people with the same name.
One month free
Laylah offers a one-month free subscription to the application. "In addition to testing the various functionalities Laylah offers, including financial analysis and retirement planning, the advisor can synchronize their clientele from multiple sources and see the results without spending a single dollar," Jean-François St-Pierre underlines.
The entry price for the platform ranges from $80 to $120 per month. "It is no more expensive than other client management tools on the market," St-Pierre says.
He adds that they have done everything possible to ensure that advisors no longer depend on a single organization for managing their client data. "Each advisor, each individual, each owner of a data hub will have their own Laylah, like an island," St-Pierre illustrates. He believes this feature is crucial in the case of data on inforce business, a weak link in the data sharing chain between the insurance company, MGA and the advisor.
"The management of data on inforce business does not work at all in the industry," St-Pierre affirms. CLIEDIS (formerly Canadian Life Insurance EDI Standards) has not yet succeeded in uniting all insurers around a common standard for data exchange on inforce business called CITS (Canadian Insurance Transaction Standardization).
Recently associated with Laylah and a minority shareholder, Christian Laroche expanded on the problem of data fluidity on inforce life insurance business based on his experience managing general agents since 1999. Laroche stepped down as the Québec president at IDC Worldsource Insurance Network (IDCWIN) in December 2020, the same year Desjardins Group acquired the MGA. He also serves as a consultant within his consulting company, Gestion Saxum.
"Data flows well between the advisor, the MGA, and the insurer at the time of policy issuance. But the data is not updated subsequently," Laroche says. "Even the MGA will not recommend to his advisors on his back-office system to keep the data in their client portfolios up to date," he says. With data sharing between Laylah applications, Laroche believes that the advisor will have all the data in one place.
St-Pierre notes that the advisor will primarily retrieve their data from suppliers (insurers, mutual fund brokers, banks, etc.). "Laylah will not retrieve the data," he adds. He also emphasizes that the exchanges between different Laylah applications are secured.
Incomplete portrait
CLIEDIS asks participating insurers that data on books of business include not only information on inforce policies but also information on out-of-force business, orphan clients and business transfers from one agent to another.
At the time of writing, a list on the CLIEDIS website showed "TBD" (to be determined) for Assumption Life and Sun Life. Beside the names Desjardins Financial Security, EDGE Benefits, Humania Assurance, and Canadian Protection Plan (CPP), "no information" is written. For BMO Insurance, the site indicates “under development” and “in progress” for Co-operators.
Co-operators' CITS files have been approved since 2012, but only for inforce policies.
Approved insurers are Beneva, Canada Life, Empire Life, Equitable, Foresters Financial (of which CPP is a subsidiary), iA Financial Group, ivari, Manulife, and RBC Insurance.
The exchange of data on advisor compliance in the CITS format is much more fluid, thanks to the APEXA system, an initiative supported from the outset by major insurers and MGAs.
MIB Group Holdings (MIB), a provider of digital solutions and life insurance data whose members include several North American insurers, acquired APEXA in 2022. MIB aims to provide its members with a digital solution focused on advisor compliance, using the connection APEXA is known to have with some 50,000 advisors in Canada. More than 95 per cent of major Canadian life insurance companies and their MGA partners use APEXA today, stated MIB at the time of acquisition.
