SFBLI Strategic Alignment Survey

Based on our discussions over the past few weeks, we have distilled the key themes into four strategic pillars. These pillars are meant to guide discussion and structure our thinking—they are not prescriptive, but rather a framework derived from real insights shared by the team.

Our Four Strategic Pillars

  • 1.
    Our Agents Are Our Differentiation — Empowering our agents with better tools and data, not replacing them.
  • 2.
    Serving Your Way — Giving customers flexible choices between digital self-service and human support.
  • 3.
    Building Resilient Systems — Capturing institutional knowledge and reducing reliance on individual experts.
  • 4.
    Core & Resource Agility — Focusing on core products while enabling teams to innovate faster.
Instructions: Please rate your level of agreement with the following statements on a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree / Not Important) to 5 (Strongly Agree / Critically Important). This survey is completely anonymous—no names, emails, or departments are collected.

Pillar 1: Our Agents Are Our Differentiation

3 Questions

1.Our agents represent our "lifeblood" and are the primary reason we win in the market.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

2.SFBLI should prioritize "supplementing" agents with digital tools rather than pursuing direct-to-consumer sales.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

3.I believe we can realistically close the "white space gap" (P&C Companies policyholders without SFBLI life insurance) using our current agent model.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

Pillar 2: "Serving Your Way" (Service Model)

3 Questions

1.We should create greater awareness among customers of the digital choices already available (self-service address changes, bank changes, EFT enrollment, etc.) rather than simply building more digital options.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

2.I am confident we can maintain our "personal touch" while empowering customers to engage either digitally or through agents based on their preference.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

3.We should explore "agent-assisted" online transactions to bridge the digital-human experience and provide flexible engagement options.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

Pillar 3: Building Resilient Systems (Knowledge Management)

3 Questions

1.Loss of tribal knowledge due to the upcoming retirement cliff represents an existential risk.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

2.We should prioritize building institutional knowledge into systems versus relying on individual experts.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

3.We can reduce new employee training time through better processes and documentation.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

Pillar 4: Core & Resource Agility

3 Questions

1.SFBLI should focus strictly on refining its core products (Whole/Term Life) rather than new product types.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

2.Centralized IT processes currently create bottlenecks that prevent departments from innovating at the speed of business needs.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

3.Departments would benefit significantly from having "sandboxes" or "low-code" tools to automate workflows and prototype solutions without waiting for centralized IT resources.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

A Few Miscellaneous Items

8 Questions

1.How important is it that SFBLI "owns the relationship" and data independently from the P&C Companies?

Not ImportantCritically Important

2.How supportive are you of SFBLI monetizing its data as an external "Data Marketplace" revenue stream?

Not SupportiveHighly Supportive

3.SFBLI should aggressively pursue B2B institutional sales (like Pension Risk Transfers) even if it requires a different skill set than our traditional agent model.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

4.Reducing our "Investment Dependency" should be a higher priority than it is today.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

5.I feel my team has a "single source of truth" for data and doesn't rely on perceptions.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

6.There is a "real fear" of job security within departments regarding the introduction of AI and automation.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

7.Leadership has a clear understanding of departments' "capacity" and "resource constraints".

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree

8.I feel comfortable "speaking my mind" to senior leadership without fear of judgment or consequences.

Strongly DisagreeStrongly Agree