These are the tech tools winning over insurance agency owners
Here's how to use them to boost business.
The entrepreneurial business owner’s mantra must always be “bigger, faster, cheaper, better” if they are to avoid the trap of becoming static, out of date and ultimately less profitable.
In the insurance agency business, we may not move with the speed of innovation, but we understand it’s important to keep up with new technology and tools that can assist, manage and even propel our growth, and importantly our profitability over time.
With the insurtech explosion over the last five years, a number of technology tools have been introduced to help agency owners meet that entrepreneur’s mandate.
Some of the tools came and went. Others are trending to irrelevance and failure as the ruthlessness of the marketplace reaps its toll. However, several of these tech tools have proven successful and are making a positive difference in agency operations. These tools appear destined to become mainstays in progressive agency owners’ arsenals.
In my journeys across the industry, I’ve had the opportunity to test out and collect feedback from other agency leaders on these tech tools. Based on my learnings, here are five you may want to consider adding to your toolbox:
Canopy Connect
This software helps agents acquire policy declaration pages digitally for a more efficient process in gathering prospect information and quoting. This promises to solve one of the principal time challenges for producers in managing new accounts and paves the way for producers to profitably work on smaller premium accounts.
Canopy Connect sends a link to prospects requesting them to complete a minimal number of questions including sharing the name of their current carrier. Once the prospect logs in, the program automatically pulls the declaration pages for their personal lines policies and sends them directly to the agent.
Tarmika
Once the Holy Grail of agents Single Entry Multiple Company Interface (SEMCI) never took off despite millions of dollars and countless hours of work. Fortunately, API’s made the promise of SEMCI come true with modern multi company commercial rating systems like Tarmika.
Multi company raters speed up quoting of small commercial accounts exponentially, allowing agents to quote with many, or perhaps even all, of their markets with one data entry set. This saves considerable time and cost, but it also allows agents to make good on their responsibility of covering market options all in one agency for the client. Tarmika is the market leader in this area. While it is not perfect, it is a terrific tool for the small commercial producer and customer service representative.
Glove Box
Apps are ubiquitous now in the insurance distribution business but most are produced by insurance carriers. These carrier apps have some utility for agency clients, but if the agency has the client’s business placed with more than one company, it can quickly get confusing and cumbersome to navigate these apps. And if the agency moves the client to a new carrier, the confusion often multiplies.
Glove Box allows agencies to easily and inexpensively develop their own apps, branded to their agencies exclusively. These agency-customized apps give clients the ability to see their policy information all in one place. An added benefit of Glove Box for agencies is that when the client uses the app for all the policies they purchase – even those acquired through a different agency — the agent can provide better client consultation and smarter cross marketing.
Virtual Insurance Assistants
In every conversation I’ve had with agents over the last five years, staffing is consistently listed as their number one challenge. With the Baby Boomer generation in full retirement retreat from the marketplace, this challenge is only becoming more critical. Using virtual assistants, which is simply a form of outsourcing, can be an vital tool in solving these problems.
Virtual assistants can be contracted full or part-time allowing agency service capabilities to scale with their growth. Employing people as remote assistants can also transform what has always been a fixed cost into a variable one. Tasks ideally suited to VA’s include policy processing, document input, agency management system data entry, quoting and even customer-facing tasks.
DONNA
The industry has been talking about the importance of “data” for what seems like forever. Yet, agents seem to be unable to make effective use of their data despite the fact that this data could be their biggest asset. DONNA is an analytics platform designed to help grow revenue by increasing policies per customer, revenue per customer and retention with data insights from the business’ existing data.
Agencies with at least $500,000 in revenue can benefit from easily unlocking the riches contained in the data hiding in their agency management systems.
Summing It Up
These tools are just five resources I’ve seen help agencies operate “bigger, faster, cheaper AND better. While they can be extremely useful, agency owners must recognize that they come with an important caveat. You have to actually use them.
The perennial challenge for busy agency owners and their staffs is how to add one more new tool to the pile of work before them.
These tools can help reduce workloads and speed up processes, but they have to not only be installed, but understood and embraced by your team. My suggestion is to review this list, pick one idea to implement, and then with the time saved, rinse and repeat.
Tony Caldwell is an author, speaker and mentor who has helped independent agents create more than 250 independent insurance agencies. Learn more by visiting www.tonycaldwell.net or contacting him at tonyc@oneagentsalliance.net.
Opinions expressed here are the author’s own.
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