According to dozens of insurance brokers and agents that we interviewed, renewal management is one of the most essential responsibilities of insurance brokers, yet many of the employees of insurance brokers and agents forget to complete this critical task.
The problem is that in this complex industry, employees are not backed up with safeguards or checklists; sometimes, the only way to ensure that all of the necessary activities are being performed is by implementing defined processes that are fully supported with innovative software solutions.
You Must Evolve Your Insurance Technology
In order to implement any new process or evolve your business procedures, you must store all of the data regarding ending policies and the necessary actions to renew those policies so that they can easily be accessed and appropriate actions taken. This is a simple, but crucial step towards business success. You can manage this data in a variety of places, including a network drive Excel file, public folders, Google spreadsheets, or Microsoft access, among numerous others. As soon as your company expands beyond a single person, this sort of open-access system must be in place.Streaming and download Froning: The Fittest Man In History (2015)
Once you have established a central database for all of your policies where you can track and organise every policy based on its ending state, then you simply need to assign someone to track those critical actions. Each ending policy should have a set status, without exception, and those statuses should be the same for all policies. The below are suggestions of these:
Proposal Presented: signifies that you have sent the renewal insurance proposal to the respective client
Answer Yes: signifies that the client has received and accepted the insurance proposal, and has chosen the insurer, insurance coverage, and payment plan
Policy Issued: signifies that the policy has been issued or the insurer has been asked to issue it. This has been entered into your policy accounting system and was subsequently delivered to the client
Answer No: signifies that the client rejected your insurance proposal. In this situation, the reason for the rejection should also be noted – “object sold” or “client received a superior proposal from another insurance provider”
Efficiency is a key aspect of every business; there is no reason why insurance policy renewal management should be any different.
Execution is Key
With insurance agents and brokers being client-focused, tasks such as filling out forms are not always high on the priorities list so what is the answer?
- The rules should be firmly established, but there must always be room for exceptions.
- Top performers are the ones who benefit from these exceptions; if you are selling more than X amount per month, then perhaps the inefficiencies of poor organisation are acceptable to your bottom line. This can occasionally backfire due to an apparent separation between certain staff members, and if every top performer behaves this way, it can be a major challenge. However, you are at least moving in the right direction for a flexible system.
- Proposing the system to average-performing employees usually works much better, as the implicit support of the system can actually boost their sales and focus their attention
- For top performers who may not wish to follow all of the new rules, hire an assistant for them, or assign their existing assistant to the task
- Make renewal KPI ratio a larger point of focus in sales meetings; if employees are failing to correctly mark their proposals, then it will reflect in the ratio, which employees will care about. You can implement a rewards system, such as a monetary bonus for achieving renewal ratio KPI for several consecutive months, etc.
- Be confident and firm in the implementation so that a positive change can be quickly seen. This will encourage consistent use of the system and support for its addition to the normal business process.
Basically, there is no better time than right now to start. Use any of the abovementioned options, and ensure you’re using technology that has the functionality to perform at its best.
