Get Appy

It’s more fun than ever these days to be an insurance agent or broker—and more productive to boot. Thanks to a wealth of innovative apps, agents have at their disposals new and more refined ways to better serve their customers, enhance their marketing messages and reduce operational costs.

One of the more enterprising agents who puts significant stock in the value presented by apps is Mark Mischenko, chief operating officer at the Bedford, N.Y.-based agency Lloyd Bedford Cox. He always has been at the leading edge of the next big technology movement, and these days he is especially excited about apps.

"I remember the first time I really got excited about technology," Mischenko said. "I was sitting at an Applied Systems user conference, and saw these dual monitors. I had just gone to a BlackBerry phone and it hit me—we can become paperless if we want. Today, we have three monitors on nearly everyone’s desks, not two. We’re great believers in leveraging technology to maximize our efficiency. And lately we’re doing just that through several apps we’ve downloaded."

Lloyd Bedford Cox’s mainstay business is personal lines for high-net-worth families. Less than 50 miles north of Manhattan, the agency offers personal risk management and insurance services and products to hedge funds, private equity firms, securities firms and investment banks, among others. "These are highly sophisticated businesses whose employees use a vast amount of technology in their daily work," said Mischenko, an agent for the past 12 years. "We need to ensure that our agency is not behind the eight ball with our own technology solutions, and this applies to our current wide use of apps."

Growing Appetite

The agency began experimenting with different software applications in 2007, when Mischenko purchased Apple’s first iPhone. He has since upgraded to the latest iPhone, the 4S, and is using the iPad 2, along with others in the firm. Although the agency’s desktops are 100 percent Windows-based, one of the key tools he relies on is the Apple Mail mobile application, which allows him to sync his Microsoft Exchange email, calendars, contacts and folders. For mobile employees and the sales team, this means that their computer workstations, phones, laptops, and other devices are all on the same page—literally.

The only fly in the ointment was the agency’s email. "Prior to having a Microsoft Exchange server, if we deleted something on one of our mobile devices we’d have to then delete it on the workstations—not the most productive way to conduct business," Mischenko said. All of that has changed in recent months, however. "Now everything is synced up perfectly and is available in real time no matter the technology and no matter where I am—in the office or on the train."

Another app Mischenko uses is MotionX-GPS Drive. Available in the iTunes App Store for download, it’s a real-time navigation app that offers live voice directions. "It’s a great utility when I’m traveling from one account to another," he said. "No matter where I am there’s somebody telling me where to go next."

Apple did not develop GPS Drive, but it did create two other apps on which the agent relies. The first is Numbers, which has version for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. It allows agents to create and edit spreadsheets whenever they may be. Even on a small device like an iPhone, the data is clear and easy to use.

The same applies to Pages, an Apple product that lets Mischenko create sharp-looking letters, reports, invitations and even advertising flyers on his phone or tablet. "It’s still amazing to me that I can open and edit Word or create an Excel spreadsheet on my phone," Mischenko said. "Before, I’d have to lug around a laptop and find a WiFi hot spot, which ate up a lot of time. I’d be looking around for the nearest Starbucks to plug in."

More recently, he added two new tools to his arsenal of apps—Dropbox and Box. The former, also downloadable from the iTunes App Store is a free service that lets users download their photos, documents and videos, which are then automatically saved on both the Dropbox website and across all of the user’s Windows and Mac OS computers and a variety of mobile devices. "Dropbox even saves stuff to my wife’s iMac," Mischenko said. "And you don’t just see a saved file, it is truly downloaded, meaning you can access it, change it, save it again—whatever is needed."

There is a drawback to the app, however. "If, for example, I have my admin upload a client proposal to me, I can only access it if I’m in a WiFi hot spot or have 3G service," he said.

That’s where Box for both the iPhone and iPad comes in. The app allows simple and secure sharing from anywhere, permitting users to send big files quickly and store them easily online. Users can access the content on the go and collaborate with others. "It really changed the client meetings for me," Mischenko said. "I no longer have to print out and carry a `tree’ of paper with me. It upped my game."

Also upping the game for other agents like Mischenko is a new app for the iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry called Classic Car Guide. The app helps agents servicing classic car collectors to peruse recent sales figures on a particular vintage car and to pinpoint an appropriate value for insurance purposes. This is up-to-the-minute data, since thousands of recent collectible car sales are recorded regularly in the app. A client will know all the information he or she needs to establish the car’s worth, prior to sale or afterwards.

A Workforce of One

In the course of a given workday, Mischenko might tap into all the apps crowding his iPhone and iPad. "Say I need to go to a client’s new home under construction," he said. "I get voice directions there and then notice they have fire extinguishers on the site, which I didn’t know about. I can snap a photo or make a video, have the client’s insurance proposal sent to me, make an adjustment to it that references the fire extinguishers, and then send it all off to the carrier. Everything that has just happened in my iPhone has now happened in all our computers. It’s pretty remarkable."

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