Puritan Life increases revenue by almost 700% with distribution channel built on Azure

Creating a new way to sell annuities directly to customers 

For decades, insurance agents sold annuities in person, which often involved visiting a customer’s home, due to the complexity in product offerings. Puritan Life Insurance Company of America knew it could simplify the complexity of purchasing annuities. It wanted to find new customers by educating them and allowing anyone, in a few clicks, to buy an annuity without an agent. The solution was Canvas Annuity (Canvas), one of the first online direct-to-consumer digital distribution channels of its kind. With Canvas, customers have round-the-clock access to annuity educational content and an online application process that allows them to make informed decisions about how fixed annuities can boost their retirement portfolios.

An insurance company in the cloud

Built fully on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, Canvas allows a customer to purchase a multiyear guaranteed annuity in 10 minutes, starting at $2,500 (a typical industry starting point is $10,000), without having to schedule an in-person meeting. This speed and method were previously unheard of when it launched in June 2020. 

“We are an all-cloud carrier, meaning all of our infrastructure, including websites, data, and applications, is hosted in Azure,” says Meg Duty, Senior Vice President at Puritan Life. Being in the cloud has enabled the company to quickly respond to market changes and customer needs by launching new products or offering new features. 

Canvas is available in 45 of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia. When Puritan Life wants to launch Canvas sales in a new state, it can be added quickly. “Now, since our data layer is in the cloud and that layer is working with our applications, we can add a state in a minute using Azure,” Duty says.

Simplicity and easy management

One of the reasons the company chose Azure was its ease of use and easy-to-understand documentation. “I was a new developer when we chose Azure, so everything had to be simple, doable, and learnable,” says John Meister, Vice President of Technology at Puritan Life. “Azure is more common sense and more plain language. Just three of us manage about 13 different domains because Azure has made things all connected and so easy.”

Meister says the company doesn’t have a dedicated security person, so he appreciates that Azure has “security built in automatically.” With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Meister and his team help detect and block malware attacks and threats. “We look at the automated reports from Defender to review findings and perform necessary actions, which helps us to manage security efficiently without needing additional personnel,” says Meister. 

The company also uses Azure Application Gateway to manage its web traffic and enhance the performance and security of the solution. With Azure Front Door, traffic is limited to certain geographies, blocking visitors to the site from countries where Canvas is not available.

Having the technology assets for the company and Canvas in Azure has also helped Puritan Life to easily pass regulatory, financial, and information security audits by relying on Microsoft security, along with business continuity and disaster recovery features.

Results exceeding expectations

“When we started Canvas, Puritan Life’s annual premium was approximately $50 million. Last year, annual premium was close to $400 million,” says Duty. “In the first 12 months, our fast application on Canvas outpaced agent distribution, and Canvas now accounts for 75% of the company’s annual premium.”

While driving impressive premium growth, Puritan Life has maintained efficient technology costs that are well below industry averages, at less than 1% of annual premium. 

The process has been refined, from having an agent spending an afternoon in a potential customer’s home to that customer being able to purchase, fund, and sign an annuity in 10 minutes on their own. 

“We wanted to shake things up a bit and see what we could do with technology and innovation,” says Dierdre Woodruff, Senior Vice President at Puritan Life. “With Canvas, I think we did.”

Discover more about Canvas Annuity on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X/Twitter.