7 deliverables to expect from an insurer

Whether you’re an independent broker or a captive agent, you may have more leverage than you think with the insurers with which you’re aligned. The question is, are you prepared to use that leverage if it would substantially improve your business?

The insurance industry faces a looming talent shortage — the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 50% of the current insurance workforce will retire by 2036, leaving more than 400,000 unfilled positions. The onus is on carriers to deliver better compensation terms and processes, better tools to help agents and brokers excel in their jobs and a better overall experience to insurance advisors. If you’re independent, that means you can pick and choose among carriers that provide all that. And if you’re captive, you can align with a company that better equips its agents to succeed.

Continuity, comfort and loyalty matter. But the reality is, if the capabilities one carrier offers are clearly superior to those of other insurers, to the point where they would give you a distinct competitive advantage, don’t you owe it to yourself and your clients to explore your options?

If you’re forced to settle for outdated, glitchy software, repetitive manual processes, substandard tools to support client engagement and prospecting, subpar back-office capabilities, and slow and opaque payment and bonusing processing, then it could be time to seek out a carrier whose best-in-class carrier tools empower you to win more business and run your business better. Those tools are out there; it’s merely a matter of knowing what to look for and where to find them. Here are some tools that can make a difference:

1. Accurate and fast payment of commissions and bonuses, and easy access to real-time accurate payment and performance insights. As reliant as advisors and agents are on bonuses and commissions, the quicker a carrier processes client transactions and the compensation earned on those transactions, the faster you’ll realize that revenue. Instead of waiting for information and compensation to trickle down through largely manual processes, look for carriers with the ability to turn around payouts rapidly (some provide daily turnaround) on simple and complex transactions.

Besides faster payments, advisors should have access to online self-service tools to view and track compensation streams in real time, anytime, from any device — and be confident the information they’re getting from the insurer is accurate and up-to-date. Insurers also should provide transparency in how they calculate agent earnings, which helps build trust in the agent-carrier relationship.

In the event of a discrepancy, the resolution process should be quick, with the ability to initiate a query in a single click, anytime, from any device, with intelligent capabilities on the carrier’s side, resulting in an easy-to-track, end-to-end resolution process.

Ultimately, it’s all about transparency, traceability, rapid resolution and getting paid quickly.

2. A streamlined digital ecosystem to make managing an insurance business easy. For insurance advisors, time is money and manual administrative tasks cost you. You want every touchpoint with a carrier to be seamless. You want to be able to bounce between apps effortlessly, with access to all the data you need. You want tools to easily review, negotiate, accept and e-sign commission contracts with a carrier.

3. Tools to create richer client interactions. Robust quote-generation capabilities, along with tools that enable you to offer and illustrate multiple policy options to clients helps them in their decision-making. These same tools should also provide agents with visibility into commissions associated with the various options they’re suggesting.

Agents also must have the ability to respond rapidly to queries and requests from clients and prospects. These kinds of capabilities will help you impress prospects and clients with your subject-matter expertise, responsiveness and professionalism.

4. Quick, seamless agent onboarding. Anyone who’s muddled through an insurer’s clunky, time-consuming agent onboarding experience knows how frustrating the process can be. On the other hand, when background, security and credit checks, and other parts of the process are automated and streamlined, the agent can onboard easily and start earning sooner.

5. Capabilities to ensure regulatory compliance and provide licensing support. As varied, changeable and complex as licensing requirements and compliance responsibilities can be, having a system that tracks all that for an advisor, identifies the steps they need to be compliant, and provides training/educational resources for licensing, etc., is immensely valuable.

6. Communications and resources to keep you up to speed on new products and services. You should expect a carrier not only to alert you promptly (via your preferred communications channels) about new products and services, features, compensations structures and bonusing schemes, etc., but also to provide robust training and client-facing resources on new offerings, so you can start selling them immediately (providing guidance on getting licensed to sell them where appropriate).

7. Tools that make contracts simple to understand and sign off on. As time-consuming to comb through and complex as contractual language can be, having contractual review capabilities that are supported by a generative AI-driven digital assistant can simplify the process. Whether you’re walking a client through a contract or reviewing a carrier’s commission plan, a digital assistant can field questions about what’s in the fine print and deliver explanations quickly, in understandable language.

These are just some of the digital capabilities agents and advisors should expect from carriers. If you’re not getting what you need to succeed, it’s time to start asking.

Yevgeny Kheifets is sales performance management solution advisor for SAP. Contact him at [email protected].