A Connecticut mid-sized Insurance agency was experiencing significant growth selling auto and home insurance year after year. They hired one producer then added another. The producers were selling two clients per day each on average.
Problem 1: The producers were spending a great deal of time finding the clients, quoting, selling, and documenting the sale. The agency owner felt the producers could write a lot more if they had more time.
Problem 2: Since the agency has been growing each year, re-marketing the renewals was getting more and more difficult. It became impossible to re-quote all the premium increases. This had a negative impact on the retention.
Plan of Action: The agency hired a Virtual Assistant (VA) to do the initial new business quotes for the producers. The new process was set up for the producers to send their prospect information to the VA. The VA used their comparative rater to quote all the available carriers. The VA obtained all the supporting documents, generated the quotes, and delivered the top three carriers to the producer. The producer reviewed the options and sold the policy.
For the renewals, the agency hired their second VA to do all the re-marketing. The process included the CSR sending the VA the renewals ahead of the renewal date. The VA performed a policy check, prepared the account with all updates, and re-marketed the policy and delivered alternative quotes to the CSR for client delivery.
Outcome:
New Business: The producers’ time was significantly freed up and they were able to sell six policies each on average per day. The producers focused on relationships and selling. The time consuming a tedious task were completed by a VA
Renewals: By having the VA do all the re-marketing, the CSR saved a significant amount of time each day. The CSR’s focused on talking with the clients, building relationships, and having time to cross-sell. The outcome increased the client retention from 89 to 94%, increased policy counts and revenue from cross-selling, and removed significant stress off the CSR’s day to day job.Final thoughts: Why use a $200 per hour (producer) to do a $12 per hour task? In addition, why would you use a $40 per hour CSR to do a $12 per hour re-marketing job?
