When was the last time you received email communications from your life insurance company? For most of us, the answer is never. Contrast that with the last time you received email communication from your bank, your financial advisor or your favorite retailer. Life insurance is so far behind that it is not even in the e-delivery race. E-delivery allows the customer to elect to receive documents such as contracts, letters, account statements, and billing notices via email rather than paper mail. Generally, a notification is sent that a document has been posted to a secure website, or, in the case of general notifications, mailed directly to the policy owner’s email address. Areas of opportunity for e-delivery in insurance span all processes, from field administration to customer acquisition to claims. The benefits of using e-delivery are typically derived from reducing scanning, mailing, and printing, lessening process complexity, and increasing automation and systems integration. These drivers lower costs, reduce cycle times, and increase customer and agent satisfaction. I recently published a report titled, You’ve Got Mail Two Decades Later, Why Are We Still Talking About E-Delivery Rather Than Doing It, where I interviewed 17 life insurers about their current and future e-delivery plans. Although e-delivery can bring multiple benefits to life insurers, it has been poorly adopted. In fact, only 25% of the surveyed insurance companies are using e-delivery. Areas of focus within the report include: • Progress of e-delivery. • Targeted documents for e-delivery. • Benefits and challenges associated with e-delivery. There are a number of challenges life insurers face when it comes to e-delivery, including legacy systems, policy holder adoption, and agent engagement. However, other industries have found a way to overcome these challenges. It’s time for life insurers to set aside the excuses and find a solution. Life insurers have been left in the e-delivery dust and need to run with haste to catch-up.