Premium Funding and Ebix have teamed up to provide a payment facility for brokers that eliminates the need for manual contract preparation.

Pay By The Month (PBTM) is available to brokers with the Ebix-owned WinBEAT broking system, which has more than 500 users.

The facility automatically calculates the monthly payment for insurance policies created via WinBEAT, and includes it as a payment option in every client invoice or statement.

“This is by far the biggest announcement we have ever made,” Premium Funding director Ross Hayward told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “[PBTM] is walking off the shelves. Brokers are signing up and it’s been an absolute game-changer for us.”

He says 80 brokerages have signed up to the payment facility so far.

Premium Funding estimates PBTM will be automatically offered on more than 500,000 invoices for more than 1 million insurance policies worth $1 billion a year.

For the first 150 brokers who sign up, Premium Funding will pay their Ebix fees for the next five years.

“The insurance industry is going through its biggest period of transformation, with technology automating so many processes and opening up new revenue possibilities,” Mr Hayward said.

“We want to be at the front of that change, and will continue to invest in and roll out new products to shake up the market.”

Ebix has been working with Premium Funding on the service for the past 18 months.

“It eliminates the broker having to do anything manually,” Ebix Australia MD Leon d’Apice told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

He says a similar facility called Background Funding has been available on CBS, another Ebix broking system, for the past nine months.