How insurance agents thrive in 'the new normal'
Providing insurance consumers with fast, efficient, online business options can be a way of enhancing the agent-client connection.
What a difference a year makes? That phrase sounds nice rolling off the tongue, but it’s not quite accurate when it comes to P&C insurance or the world around it.
As 2022 unfolds, it’s not so much that the world has shifted dramatically from a year ago; it’s that insurance professionals and their clients have begun to adjust and even thrive in the “new normal” brought on by the pandemic, technology and the various social, political and economic winds that will come to define this point in history.
We see this idea play out several times in the January/February issue of NU Property & Casualty magazine.
Consider the results of the 2022 Independent Insurance Agent Survey. Hundreds of readers chimed in on questions related to the health of their businesses, the demand to adopt digital tools and the overall challenges faced by today’s insurance agents and agencies. Many said the insurance landscape now is not so dramatically different than it was a year ago. They’ve simply become better navigators.
This is especially true of the shift to remote work. Since insurance sales are largely based on relationships, some agents lament the loss of the face-to-face connection that was inherent to working with clients in the office. Many more, however, concede that today’s consumers expect fast, efficient, online business options. Providing them with such options can be a way of enhancing the agent-client connection as opposed to undercutting it.
The trend of embracing rather than complaining about change also surfaces in an analysis of the impact of one of 2021’s most dramatic and deadly events: The collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla. I enlisted an insurance advisor who lives and works in South Florida to weigh in on the potential coverage fallout from this tragedy.
JAG Insurance Principal Fernando Alvarez writes that waterfront properties were already difficult to insure before the tragedy that unfolded on July 24, 2021 in Surfside. Insurance pros operating in coastal areas can now anticipate even tougher underwriting and increased structural scrutiny of waterfront properties. However, it would be advisable to think of this environment as a commonsense market as opposed to a hard market, Alvarez says. He adds that requirements such as regular facility reporting may be tedious for insureds in the short term but will ultimately work in their favor as buildings will be safer and claims will be less frequent.
A year ago, I wrote about pandemic fatigue taking hold at home as well as in the world at large. Now, as masking becomes the norm in many public places and the majority of the world’s population continues to roll up sleeves for yet another COVID-19 vaccination, pandemic fatigue seems to be giving way to a sense of resignation.
The world is what it is. COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere. Neither is global warming, government regulation or the steady march of digitalization. The insurance professionals who are thriving and growing their businesses in this environment are the ones who view challenges as opportunities; the ones who roll up their sleeves and accept that change may be the world’s only constant.
“Adapt or perish,” wrote Nobel Prize-winning novelist H.G. Wells, who in his lifetime witnessed the advent of aircraft, space travel and the internet. His advice is as apropos today as it was in the early Twentieth Century.
Also by Elana Ashanti Jefferson: