How to expand your book of business through existing clients
To achieve ongoing success in insurance, mind how you partner with other trusted advisors and make the right digital investments.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, agents and brokers had no shortage of hazards and risks from which to protect clients. Whether it was adequate coverage for their high-value homes, carefully curated collections or risks associated with managing a household staff, clients looked to their trusted advisors to ensure they were adequately protected.
Related: Crisis: An opportunity for agent and broker growth
As the coronavirus pandemic unfolded, heightened and emerging risks also have come into focus, such as cybersecurity issues from the mass shift to remote work or fresh exposures when individuals vacate primary residences in favor of extended stays at vacation homes.
In this new, less certain environment, agents, brokers, and their carrier partners have an opportunity to play a more meaningful role in helping their clients navigate this dynamic and more challenging risk landscape. As a result, there may be new opportunities to re-position yourself as a trusted advisor.
New, overlooked risks
Top agents know that one of the most effective ways to expand relationships with successful clients is to demonstrate value by providing more education about unknown risks. Keeping up with developments and interests in clients’ lives is important, but a thorough risk consultation with their primary insurer provides a focused opportunity to engage with a client to identify potentially unaddressed risks.
These can be conducted in-person with safe practices or even virtually using a smart device. The resulting detailed report of findings and recommendations will help enable you to have more meaningful conversations about risk mitigation measures or additional coverage solutions.
The COVID-19 era has highlighted that many clients should thoughtfully manage their risks. Given ongoing stock-market volatility, some clients may be carefully looking at their comfort level for handling out-of-pocket losses themselves. Now is a great time to discuss adequacy of limits from both property and liability perspectives. From a property perspective, understanding clients’ passions, such as restoring historic homes or collecting fine art, often yields an opportunity not only to identify exposures but also to serve as a resource for connecting them to an insurer’s experts to help assess valuation, mitigate risks or even recommend specialized vendors that can assist with proper care and maintenance of the property.
For instance, in-home restoration or new construction, it makes sense to have an agent and insurer involved early to suggest ways to help prevent future loss, such as installing water shutoff valves and sensors or making sure that security, smoke and heat detection systems are integrated at that stage rather than retrofitted later.
Furthermore, proper insured valuation has come to the forefront as successful clients have sought ways to deal with the pandemic, such as expanding their primary homes to accommodate remote working or seeking refuge by building second homes or buying habitable watercraft or RVs. While these purchases make a lot of sense and will bring your clients more enjoyment during this challenging time, they may increase risks and require your guidance to adequately protect clients and their pocketbooks.
Next, consider the following liability scenario: An inexperienced driver in the family or a home worker employed by your client is found responsible in an accident while driving the client’s car, resulting in a fatality or serious permanent injury requiring ongoing care. Estimated lifetime costs for a paralyzing injury could reach more than $5 million, according to data from the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center. How much potential wealth of your client could be exposed if there were such a judgment? That should be the starting point for determining proper limits on an umbrella liability policy. It’s a good practice — but often overlooked risk management tool — to routinely review umbrella limits as a client’s life circumstances change.
Above all, educating clients on potential real impacts of unforeseen exposures at a time when they may be most vulnerable financially will help drive home the need to purchase adequate protection and undertake appropriate protective measures.
Become a matchmaker
Insurers with a commitment to serving the affluent market have developed deep expertise across the full spectrum of these clients’ needs and interests. By understanding a carrier’s coverage offerings, products and supporting risk mitigation and claims management resources, you will be better positioned to find a match with a client’s specific needs. That matching of client need and specific carrier strengths is ultimately what will demonstrate your value to the client.
An example of a carrier’s specialized service offerings in this regard is where the carrier may provide client notifications that signal timely and relevant information on impending storms or other catastrophes or offer an ability for them to see how close their properties might be to being in harm’s way. Carriers with a significant digital presence are making these investments to meet client expectations through rapidly changing climate conditions.
Also, for areas at risk of wildfire, a carrier may offer extra defense measures for insured properties. Before an event, risk consultants might recommend specific types of landscaping or fire-resistant vents to reduce the chance that flying embers will result in a home catching fire. Carriers may also partner with private firefighting firms that supplement local authorities to help protect a client’s home.
For clients with second homes in hurricane-exposed areas, complimentary assistance may be available from their carrier to quickly assess the condition of the home after the storm, and if needed, initiate the claim process and dispatch mitigation specialists to help limit the potential for further damage. When the client is hundreds or thousands of miles away, this can bring significant peace of mind.
Unrelated to weather, clients are often surprised at the potential for extensive damage from water originating from inside their homes, due to causes such as freezing or poor water line connections in appliances and plumbing. Homes are most vulnerable and resulting damage can be especially severe when they are unoccupied for extended periods, which is quite common with second homes. Carriers can offer solutions, such as flow sensors that detect leaks and provide alerts, as well as automatic shutoff valves to stop water flow and limit damage.
Apart from property exposures, clients also need to understand cyber threats. During the pandemic, cybersecurity risks have increased significantly. The mass workforce move to remote locales resulted in increased vulnerabilities from unsecured home networks, according to research by security rating firm BitSight. It follows that insurers such as Chubb have developed both personal and commercial coverages to help clients recover from a security breach and offer extensive guidance on how to help protect against future digital intrusions.
Tech catalyzes growth
Successful individuals and families are often well-connected, early adopters of technology, from smart components controlling many aspects of home convenience, security and comfort, to active social media presence. As a result, agents and insurers need to continue upping their digital game to maintain visibility and relevance.
With the explosion of available tech gadgets and apps, agents and insurers have an opportunity to help clients make sense of it all by advising them about how to create a comprehensive system that integrates core life safety, security, and loss prevention systems and then adds discretionary components in a way that won’t interfere with critical systems or compromise cybersecurity.
Core systems include security monitoring and alarms, smoke and heat sensors and alerts, carbon monoxide detection; and water flow sensor and shutoff valves, among others. Helping clients untangle this tech web and providing assurance that key systems will work as expected will demonstrate your value and help them recognize the need for identity and cyber protection. In the same way, improving your digital presence and savvy across web and social media can help to enhance relationships with clients and produce qualified new business leads in the “lower-touch” COVID-19 environment.
To accomplish this, connecting with clients on social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook is a must. This will allow you to share content related to interests, risks and solutions that are meaningful to successful clients. If your agency is light on material, insurers have developed content on a wide range of topics that they make available for agents’ digital outreach efforts.
When you begin your digital journey, getting the frequency right can be a fine balance, according to a Deloitte digital CRM study. At the same time, it’s important to be consistent and regular with posts — an ideal frequency is one or two per week. Authenticity and relevance are also keys to successful online engagement. Carriers such as Chubb even offer tools and resources that make it easy for agents to produce their own email-based cross-selling campaigns. Also, when clients have a positive experience with your agency, it never hurts to ask them to provide Google feedback or serve as an advocate for your agency on social media.
Sometimes, agencies overlook digital basics that could help provide additional touchpoints for existing and potential clients. One simple step is knowing your agency’s digital footprint and updating contact information wherever it appears on your agency’s or partners’ sites. Learning about and utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) principles can help you stand out online. Combining SEO with paid search, where you only pay per click, is relatively inexpensive and can position your agency higher in Google results when a consumer enters key search terms. Chubb, for example, offers training for agencies on how to maximize the impact of their digital marketing across social platforms, search, email and the web.
Expand your influence
Financially accomplished clients have a network of service providers, including financial advisors, accountants, bankers, real estate brokers, attorneys, and estate planners, each with their own role in managing the client’s affairs. However, research by Oliver Wyman revealed that the vast majority of these clients look to their financial advisors to act as “quarterback” in navigating all their financial matters, including property & casualty insurance decisions.
At the same time, only 28% of financial advisors provide support with P&C coverage. Engaging with your client’s financial advisor will not only help close gaps in coverage and create a more holistic financial plan for that client but also could turn that financial advisor into a great source for new client referrals.
To conclude, client interactions look a little different at the end of 2020 than they did when the year began. While clients’ needs and potential risks may have shifted, the one thing that hasn’t changed is the need for ongoing guidance in a constantly evolving risk landscape. Similarly, shifting how you partner with other trusted advisors, coupled with the digital investments you make, will be key to achieving ongoing success.
Ana Robic (arobic@chubb.com) is chief operating officer at Chubb Personal Risk Services.
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