EGPR enables product providers to request a General Practitioner’s Report electronically from GP practices. By making it easier for providers to access GP reports the service will greatly speed up the underwriting process and deliver a much quicker turnaround for IFAs of what has traditionally been a lengthy pause in the new business process.
The delay caused by the traditional ‘paper chase’ for General Practitioner’s Reports can be significant, taking on average four weeks. This causes a number of issues for financial advisers and product providers, notably a delay in getting premiums on the books, increased numbers of policies that are not proceeded with and an administrative overhead in tracking and chasing GPR requests.
One provider is currently live on the service and Marlborough Stirling is currently in discussions with other life companies regarding their subscription to eGPR. Encouragingly, ahead of any official launch of the service to the GP community, over 500 practices have already registered – covering over 4 million patients. Concerted enrolment efforts are being made over the coming months to promote new GP practice registrations.
Additionally, two key developments in the medical and insurance sectors will help this to happen:
eGPR ( www.egpr.co.uk) has been developed jointly between Marlborough Stirling and healthcare sector IT provider, Primary Care Technologies. The service has been produced to conform to the security, content and ethical requirements of the British Medical Association (BMA) and has already been approved by the Association of British Insurers (ABI).
David Power, managing director of Marlborough Stirling’s life and pensions business, comments:
“Initiatives such as this are vital in our industry. eGPR not only delivers cost benefits to both life companies and to GP practices, but it also speeds up the new business process, making life easier for the distributor. In addition, the technology used to deploy eGPR helps to ensure that the correct procedures for requesting medical information are followed and that required levels of data quality and security are met.”
