Agencies aiming to reach their peak performance must consider the full roundtrip of the insurance lifecycle. A seamlessly connected digital roundtrip that connects each stage of the insurance lifecycle enables agencies to grow, operate, and control their business more effectively.
Put more simply – think of the Digital Roundtrip as a track and the agency as a relay team running to each step of the insurance lifecycle. Agencies need to go from the beginning of the customer relationship, starting with marketing and sales, to searching for appetite and quoting risks, to customer payment, and back around again to providing the customer with their bound policy.
Connecting all systems, people, and stages of the client journey and policy lifecycle makes the baton handoffs much easier. Let’s take a lap around the track to see how the Digital Roundtrip of Insurance works and how it can help your agency achieve peak performance.
Leading Off With Core Automation
The first leg of the race starts in the system you log in to every morning: your management system. This is your agency's core platform. It should have capabilities that automate operations and allow you to communicate better with insurers and policyholders. Your technology foundation should allow you to leverage essential tools, such as customer relationship management, sales automation, financial accounting, reporting, and policy and benefits administration.
When choosing your agency management system, it’s important to look for one that has an open and scalable architecture. This will allow you to pass the baton on to your relay partners outside of your core team. You get the choice to integrate with the partners you chose as part of your tech stack, allowing for seamless workflows between applications without ever leaving your core system.
Race to the Market
When a customer brings a risk to an agent, the next leg of the Digital Roundtrip relay is to search for markets and quote the business. This process is incredibly tedious. Searching for markets, completing the necessary paperwork and navigating multiple individual carrier portals is incredibly time-consuming. There is also a lot of potential for errors due to the repeatedly rekeying information.
This is where a commercial lines quoting tool comes into play. By integrating this tool with your management system, you can have the baton automatically handed off. Information flows from the management system to the commercial lines quoting tool, saving time and errors caused by manual data entry. These tools also give your agents a better view of the coverage available, in real time. They will be able to offer clients the best possible coverage for their risk, without spending as much time searching for markets.
See also: A Data Strategy for Successful AI Adoption
Winning Gold
The next leg of the Digital Roundtrip race is digital payments. While you may not get paid with a gold medal, digital payments helps you get paid faster and allows you to provide a better experience to your customers. Collecting checks and cash has been a steady state process for decades, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. It requires a significant amount of time and expense to your business and slows payment reconciliation. Not to mention the security risk of keeping cash and checks with client bank account information in a desk drawer where anyone can gain access.
Implementing a digital payments solution that integrates into your management system and customer portal will make the payment process seamless for your staff and your clients. This will automate payment collection, processing, and reconciliation. It eliminates the manual application of credits to debits and reduces operational overhead by automatically applying the credit once the payment is processed. The integration with the management system also allows for a paper trail of invoices and notifications to be tied to the client’s account, giving your staff a single view of that client.
On the customer side, digital payments solutions provide the effortless, modern checkout experience that internet-savvy consumers have come to expect. You are able to provide your clients with access to their bills through multiple platforms. Whether it be a payment portal, a secure link, or an invoice, your clients can pay their bill in the way they are most comfortable. They can also use credit cards or ACH – no more relying on checks and cash. Integrating your payments solution to your customer portal means your client’s information will flow seamlessly between platforms, requiring the client to enter minimal information when paying their bill.
See also: Characteristics of an Effective Change Agent
Compete and Win at Digital Speed
Now we’re in the home stretch. We’ve come right back around the track to the management system, where all this information is stored. This will give your team easy access to all the information they need to service and remarket accounts at renewal.
Creating a seamless end-to-end policy lifecycle for all stakeholders eliminates the frustrating, time-consuming, expensive, and broken processes in insurance today and provides high-value experiences that help agencies find the best markets, effortlessly submit business, and quote and service clients faster.
With the right tools, your agency can easily embrace the Digital Roundtrip to compete and win at digital speed!
