Foremost and always, we at Nationwide thank you for entrusting us with providing important insurance coverage for your clients. We need to inform you of some recent developments regarding application volumes, particularly in the state of Washington.

It is important for us to be transparent about what is going on here at Nationwide, where the congestion is, and what we are doing about it; then, we ask a few things of you.

First, we have separated our Washington business from all other states’ business to minimize impacts on non-Washington applications.

Second, while we have completed our work indexing the paper applications we received from the state of Washington, which is an important first step in getting these applications entered into our new business work queues, we still have more to do in order to move applications to case review, where they will start to move through the remainder of the process. This is where the recent congestion has been occurring. What this means to you is that you might not see some policies on the Life Pending Tracker yet.

Third, we have increased staff to help move Washington applications to the next step. Cases that require vendor intervention (exams/labs) are expected to have delays as well, as these vendors are also experiencing these industry-wide, significant increases in volume.

Last, we feel it is important for us to share with you that the Underwriting and new business experience for the Washington cases will be a bit different than you have come to expect. In order to keep our underwriting and new business personnel doing the important work of underwriting and processing cases, we want to lessen their focus on communicating multiple times as a policy moves through the system. There will be fewer ongoing communications as the policy is processed. You will still be contacted for any needed requirements and again when a decision has been reached. We encourage you to periodically check the Life Pending Tracker (see below) relative to the status of your submitted applications.

We ask for your patience as our main focus is to process this volume of business as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We appreciate your understanding as we work through this challenging environment together.