Think about the insurance world five, ten, even twenty years ago. Now, consider where we are today. A lot has changed over the years. Carriers are now writing new types of coverage, leveraging new technologies and exploring new opportunities.
But there is one thing that hasn’t changed. Insurance brokers are the lifeline of insurance carriers, and they’re absolutely critical for consumers looking to find insurance coverage.
Insurance is an inherently personal industry. Why? Because insurance protects our most valued personal belongings – our lives, our livelihoods, our health, and even our legacy.
Consumers don’t want to trust just anyone when it comes to insurance. And they definitely don’t want to work with companies who are cold and impersonal. They want to trust their insurance coverage to someone who can understand their values, relate to their needs, and provide them with the service they expect. That’s why brokers are so essential – and why carriers should pay attention to them.
Why Carriers Should Care
Brokers are a carrier’s pipeline to consumers, which also means they’re the direct route to the bottom line. The stronger a carrier’s relationships are with their broker partners, the more access they will have to potential insureds and new premium opportunities.
But serving as a strong partner for brokers is about more than just providing good customer service when claims arise. Brokers work with carriers throughout the entire lifecycle of an insurance policy – from quoting, to binding, claims, and renewals. What if carriers could make the entire process easier, saving their broker partners time, and giving them more time to drive growth?
Meet Brokers Where They Are
Brokers often rely on agency management systems (AMS) and comparative rating and binding tools to keep their operations organized, serve prospects and customers more efficiently, and to win more business.
As a carrier, if you’re looking to bolster your broker relationships and reap the benefits of a wider pool of potential premium, it’s time you meet the brokers where they already are. And you can do that by integrating into your broker partners’ existing AMS and comparative rating tools.
But it’s not just about the brokers. Integrating your pricing into brokers existing tools has a lot of benefits for carriers too.
Quoting: It may be easy for you, as a carrier, to provide pricing to brokers each time request it from you directly. But that’s not an easy process for your broker partners – it’s a lot of work to get all of the quotes they need, and to find the best plan option for their clients. If your pricing and policy documentation are already integrated in into their AMS and comparative rater, quoting and servicing becomes easy for your broker partners. And the easier it is, the more time they have to dedicate to selling – and selling for you.
Competitive Analysis: Do you know your win-loss ratio for quotes you provide to brokers? While providing your data to a system which also houses your competitor’s data may seem scary, the intel that you’ll be able to obtain from better understanding your win-loss ratio will help you improve pricing, enhance your market strategy and bolster adoption for any products you’re planning to bring to the market.
Improved Pipeline: The easier it is for brokers to price out your insurance plans, the more likely they will be to do it. By easing the quoting process and effectively shortening the distance between yourself and your prospective customers, you can improve your pipeline.
Want to Learn More?
If you’re ready to meet your broker partners in the middle, Zywave is ready to help. Our CPQ (comparative rate and bind) and AMS solutions are already integrated with hundreds of carriers nationwide, with more joining every month.
This is an opportunity you don’t want to miss. To speak with one of Zywave’s carrier experts, and to learn more about how you can partner with Zywave CPQ and Zywave AMS, click here.