Whether it’s a quick morning jog, coffee in the car, or a shot of espresso at your favorite cafe, we all have a part of our morning routine that gives us that “Hello, today!” boost. Could your agency use that jolt, too?
Whether its tech tips, marketing tricks, news and information, or anything in-between, take advantage of the advice and inventiveness provided by great minds in the industry.
A recent post from Agency Nation hit on some of the best resources out there. Below are some of our favorite resources from the list.
Get targeted resources on perpetuation, cyber security, and more with the SIS eGuides
6 Online Insurance Resources to Follow
Agency Nation: Though specific resources are named on the list, the site itself has a wealth of information. Choose from articles, podcasts and a weekly video show uncovering the latest trends and tactics in independent insurance.
Insurance Thought Leadership: True to its name, this site brings together great minds in the industry. Read articles, listen to podcasts, or check out one of three blogs, including one focused on innovation.
The GROW Program: Stemmed from a social and digital marketing business, GROW offers a blog and podcast for agencies looking to hone branding and expand exposure.
Carrie Reynolds: Carrie has been at it since 1996, including creating her own brand, Insurance Goddess. Show co-owns her family-run agency and goes full throttle in insurance branding and marketing.
Coverager: With a focus on insurance tech, Coverager is a curation of what’s up with insurance, innovation, and the tools that make it happen. Check out its “Coverage Ponders” section for engaging articles.
Agency Checklists: Based out of Massachusetts, this site provides the latest in agency, insurer, fraud, and other industry news. It’s the straight facts owners need to make the best decisions for their business.
The conversation about improving your agency doesn’t have to stop at gaining tips and tricks. Keep the conversation growing by sharing your insights with your colleagues. We encourage Partner XE users to share their latest ideas through our Partner XE user community.
Whether it’s meeting at our regular Regional Learnings, shaping the Partner XE experience as a member of a workgroup or connecting on our regular monthly webinars, it’s important for the Partner XE community to connect in order to grow.
Get connected with the Partner XE community today! Contact us at [email protected] or 800.747.7005, Option 6.
Like any small business, independent insurance agencies are continually searching for ways to improve. Whether it be better quality service, streamlined operations, or a more effective way of doing business, each improvement makes an impact.
The phrase “data analysis” may seem intimidating. But, once your agency has set up reporting measures, capturing data is easy and interpretation is intuitive.
Though your agency could report on any number of areas, two of the most telling are with finances and employees. Below are a few of the reporting areas that can help you gain information on where your agency stands, so you can determine where you need to go.
Finances tend to come to mind first when talking about data. There are a few areas to investigate to get a read on how your agency is performing financially. To get a handle on your agency’s finances, set up reports to track these two important areas:
Revenue: Track income from new customers, line additions for existing customers, and any other way you’re making money. Set up reporting once, so you don’t have to scramble when you need this pertinent info.
Income loss: Look at areas where you’re losing business. Pay attention to patterns. Is there a certain time of year, policy type, or point in your sales process where more business is lost than others?
Just as important as your finances is how your employees are performing. The two go hand-in-hand. The more efficient and productive your staff is, the better you’ll do as an agency. Two key tracking areas include:
Call analysis: This data lets you know the end result of each phone call you or your producers make to prospects or customers. Call analysis reports can tell you two things: 1) if your outreach methods are netting positive results and 2) what sequences or methods are working better than others. You can use this information to adjust your tactics for more positive results.
Employee productivity: You can track what your employees are doing and how long it takes them to do it through your agency management system. The goal here is not to monitor your staff’s every move, but to get an idea of which processes are taking longer than others. Then, you can work to make those tasks move faster, whether it be through new workflows or eliminating the task through automation.
Your agency management system is by far the best tool for collecting and reporting on data. Your system should have built in reports and the option to create your own custom read-outs. Once your agency has established good data gathering habits, pulling reports is as easy as clicking a button.
Another great capability to leverage is integrated accounting, which floods your financial data into and out of your agency management system. Integrated accounting not only saves you from entering the same data twice, it ensures records in your management system are up to date. And, since all your finances are found in your management system, you can again pull any report with one keystroke.
You can find out more about the benefits of accounting integration, standard and custom reporting, email integration, and other valuable agency management system capabilities on the SIS website. You’ll get information on Partner XE, our premier agency management system challenging the status quo in the insurance industry. View a demo and get in touch with one of our experienced team members. Get all the answers at sispartnerplatform.com.
Switching your agency management system is one of the biggest challenges you’ll face as an agency. Choosing a new system is a feat of its own, and only the first step in your system conversion process. However, switching systems doesn’t have to be painful! Preparation is the best medicine to save you and your agency from headaches.
Start the process by ensuring key agency team members view the system. Just as you would when purchasing a car or a home, your team should test out and poke around in each potential system. Make sure the work they do day in and day out are just as easy, if not easier, in the new agency management system.
After the “test drive”, ask for (and take!) advice and opinions. This small act helps agency members invest in the new system, making your conversion process easier.
2. Pick a strategic start date
Even the best conversion processes have some hiccups and hang-ups. Give your agency space by scheduling your transition during a less busy time of year. Determine when you have the least amount of renewals or select a time around a holiday. A strategic start date will manage stress.
3. Get your data ready
Data transfer can be the most difficult part of converting from one management system to another. Think about how your data needs to be managed to get it ready for conversion. Take the opportunity to clean your data and create a plan on how to re-enter or capture and save all the data that will not convert.
This fresh re-start in a new system is the perfect time to roll out the most well-organized operations you can achieve. Gather your team and go over every workflow, from documenting prospect interactions to processing a renewal. This is your chance to make sure your workflows are the most efficient and up to E&O standards.
5. Be deliberate about training
Learning a brand-new management system isn’t an easy task. Ensure your staff has all the training resources they need to make it as smooth as possible.
Plan ahead: four to six weeks before your switch, schedule an hour a week to train as an agency or department. Conduct your workflow audit during this time and go over how to integrate them into your new system. Have each team member teach a different session to empower them and create power users within your agency.
If your new management system offers onsite training BUY IT! We’ve seen hundreds of agencies transition from dozens of different systems, and each has pointed to onsite training as essential to a smooth transition. This training should happen after your team has started on your new system so you can ask pointed questions about workflows.
6. Be patient!
Have patience with yourself, your team, and anyone involved in the transition. Switching agency management systems is not an easy task. It’s a major change for any agency, needing to relearn the daily tasks you used to know by heart. But, after a few weeks, those tasks get easier and soon it will all feel back to normal. As a leader in your agency, being patience and supportive of your team is vital.
Finding the Right Partner
At SIS, patience and support have been what makes each agency transition successful. We’re determined to be with your agency each step of the way, from sign-on to go-live. Nothing can replace that personal attention and always-extended helping hand.
You can find out more about our training and support services on our website, sispartnerplatform.com. Or, you can give us a call at 800.747.7005, Option 6. We’re here by the phone ready to help.
Whether or not you like, know, or even understand digital insurance services, it’s clear independent agencies need to embrace them. A recent CB Insights look at tech in insurance showed insurance technology startups raised $1.7 billion in 2016. That’s no small potatoes.
Such high investment in companies producing digital insurance tools signals a need for insurers to keep up or get left behind. But, it can be hard to tell which digital tools are worth the investment. We put together a quick list of some top tools to keep your agency in the game.
Mobile Access
Mobile access to your agency website and management system benefit both customers and employees alike. Agents can use mobile to look up and update prospect and customer info on the road. Customers use mobile to make claims onsite and look up their policy information 24/7.
Similar to mobile, client portals give customers greater access to their personal and policy information and make it easier for agencies to process customer requests. Client portals exist on your website and feed into your agency management system, capturing customer information instantly.
Comparative Raters
This online tool quickly compares carrier rates, helping you give your customers the best price, fast. Many raters integrate with management systems, making them even easier to use.
You’ve heard it again and again. Paperless workflows not only speed up agency processes, but they make things easier for customers and prospects. Talk about a win-win. Your agency can go paperless with underwriting, eSignatures, and document scanning and storage.
The more your agency digitizes, the more vulnerable you become to cyber-attacks. As you add more tech-based tools, keep your agency data safe with secure servers. Servers should be off-site, contain complex data encryption, and have redundant back-ups.
Too often agencies shy away from tech, mistakenly believing it will remove the human connection that makes independent insurance so unique. At SIS, we strive to seek that balance – working with our clients to make our Partner XE agency management system the most advanced tool to support their independence.
Find out how SIS and Partner XE can enhance your agency service. Contact us at 800.747.7005, Option 6 or [email protected].
Your customers are your #1 asset. Without them, you have no business! So, you want to have a positive relationship with each of them. A big part of that is building trust, especially when it comes to keeping their information secure.
Are you ready to take on that responsibility? Only if you can say your agency is protected from cyber risk. A protected agency can make the following statements to their customers. Can you?
“Our agency data is monitored 24/7.”
If you’re utilizing an offsite, cloud-based data storage system, your data is protected round the clock.
“We can securely receive sensitive customer information.”
Multi-character password-protected email encryption keeps sensitive data safe.
“Our agency data is backed-up regularly.”
Cloud services also provide consistent redundant back-ups, ensuring your agency’s data is doubly safe.
Hear from industry experts on why cyber security matters and how to protect your agency
“We have an agency plan to combat cyber-attacks.”
Every agency should have a plan in place. Know where your data is stored, how to access it during an attack, and your recovery process.
“Our agency has data security measures in place.”
Employ agency regulations around data safety, including strong passwords, control over application downloads, and limited access to sensitive data.
Let them know how you’re storing data, the measures you’re taking to keep it safe, and notify them immediately in the unlikely event of a data breach.
Connection and transparency is a big part of what we do at SIS. We keep our clients informed and maintain open communication about how their data stays safe with Partner XE’s secure infrastructure.
You can find out more about how Partner XE keeps agency data safe on our website. Or, get in touch with us at [email protected] or 800.747.7005, Option 6.
Our next “Behind Our Insurance Agency Software” series focuses on encrypted email and signature provider RPost. Based in Los Angeles, CA, the team at RPost operates in the U.S., the U.K., and more than 100 countries worldwide.
Formed in 1999, RPost filled an emerging need in online communications. While the convenience of email made it the dominant form of business communications, the team at RPost saw a worrying trend in email security. Organizations were sending sensitive information via the web and needed to protect it.
RPost stepped up to fill that gap between convenience and security, adding legal verification to email content and attachments through encryption technology. I talked with RPost’s VP of Business Development, Jake Finnell, about how RPost brought its powerful encrypted email and esignature services to SIS and the Partner Platform community.
Comparison quoting, esignatures and e-doc processing, and other digital insurance software tools have vastly improved personalization and customer service in insurance. It’s also becoming clear that these tools are also making agencies more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. According to the Identify Theft Resource Center, cyber-attacks increased by 42% in the first quarter of 2021, affecting an estimated 51 million people.
As a community-minded, independent agency, you can’t afford to expose your customers to that risk. Not only would it affect you financially, it would also damage your reputation in the community. How can you keep your customers and agency protected?
The evolution of sales as a software (SaaS) has dramatically changed the software landscape. Thanks to their easy-to-integrate nature, more businesses use SaaS applications over desktop software to improve operations. A 2019 report found that companies with less than 50 employees had, on average, 47 SaaS apps in use across their organization.
This SaaS revolution takes shape in the insurance industry with insurtech. Based in SaaS, insurtech provides streamlined operations through integrated solutions. While agency owners recognize the benefit, many ask how to incorporate insurtech – do they implore their management system providers or take on the integrations themselves? The answer lies in what it is you as an owner want for your agency.
