10 Compelling Reasons Why Agents Need Insurtech

#1 Improve Digital Marketing

Insurance agents today need to have a strong digital marketing presence to find new clients and engage existing ones. Fortunately, InsurTech can help agents succeed in this area. While you still need to put in the work to understand your audience and create compelling content, different types of InsurTech solutions can help you improve your digital marketing efficiency, expand your reach, personalize your marketing, and more. For example, Wheelhouse enables commercial insurance agents to easily create targeted landing pages, so you can send leads to more relevant pages that can help you close more deals.

#2 Provide Better Customer Service

InsurTech solutions can also help insurance agents provide better customer service in several ways. With targeted landing pages, for example, you not only can market to new leads but also share relevant information for specific client segments, rather than directing them to generic pages. Moreover, InsurTech can enhance customer service such as by speeding up customer queries. If a customer has a question about their policy, for example, some InsurTech solutions can use artificial intelligence to then automatically answer the questions. Or InsurTech can at least help insurance customer service agents find the right information to share with customers.

#3 Sell Policies Online

Related to improving digital marketing, InsurTech can also help insurance agents go digital by enabling them to sell policies online. The quoting process no longer depends on customers submitting requests to agents and then waiting for agents to talk to carriers to get rates. Instead, InsurTech software enables customers to obtain bindable quotes and renew policies themselves online, much like they would buy a plane ticket or complete any other sort of online transaction. 

#4 Add Distribution Channels

By being able to sell policies online, insurance agents can also expand their distribution channels. InsurTech solutions can use APIs to enable insurance agents to provide quoting capabilities on their websites, through email, within social channels, etc. InsurTech can also facilitate new distribution channels outside of the agent’s direct sphere. For example, through an API, an insurance agent might be able to sell policies through a commercial real estate agent’s channels, where a business owner could take out a policy as part of the process of leasing a new storefront.

#5 Optimize Underwriting

Insurance agents might have traditionally been limited by the underwriting processes of the carriers they work with, but InsurTech can help expand and optimize underwriting capabilities so agents can sell more policies. Some InsurTech tools can speed up the underwriting process such as by using AI to assess risk and issue decisions. Even if the underwriting process isn’t fully automated, InsurTech can help underwriters quickly get more of the data they need to make a decision, which ultimately helps agents find the right matches for their clients and efficiently place them with relevant insurance policies.

#6 Improve Risk Management

Related to optimizing underwriting, InsurTech can also help improve risk management. For one, InsurTech tools might spot patterns in data that underwriters might have typically missed. Insurance agents want to have strong relationships with both their carriers and their clients, so the smoother and more accurate the risk assessment process can initially be, the better that generally is for everyone. 

If InsurTech can improve risk management, then agents might be less likely to deal with uncomfortable situations like exorbitant policy renewal rates to account for the risk that wasn’t identified during the initial policy signup. And InsurTech can also help insurance agents improve their own risk management for their businesses, such as in the sense of identifying clients who may be at risk of not renewing policies or identifying risks like potential compliance errors.

#7 Streamline Compliance

As alluded to, InsurTech can also help insurance agents streamline and optimize compliance. From agents’ own reporting needs to the compliance needs of a larger carrier, InsurTech solutions can help generate reports, identify red flags, find efficiencies, etc.

“By using RegTech to automate routine processes…compliance professionals can better respond to changing regulatory demands and apply analytics to advise business functions and determine areas of heightened regulatory risks, such as agent sales practices, rate and form filings, customer and third-party fraud, and business operations,” notes Deloitte.

#8 Manage Customer Data

As agents shift to more digital practices, including more digital marketing and online sales, there can be a big increase in data. From managing customer contact information to sales patterns to claims data, there’s a lot to handle. That’s where InsurTech platforms can come in, such as to help you efficiently analyze the likelihood of a customer renewal so that you can then adjust your sales and marketing activities accordingly. Keep in mind that you should look for InsurTech platforms that support rather than stand in the way of following relevant data privacy regulations and best practices.

#9 Save Money

While InsurTech platforms carry an upfront cost, they can often save insurance agents money in the long run. For example, being able to improve sales processes, whether that’s adding distribution channels through APIs or simply being able to provide quotes on your website 24/7, can save agents’ money that they might have spent elsewhere to try to draw clients in. If success rates are low, then agents may have to pour more money into areas like pay-per-click or social media advertising. But if agents can use InsurTech to close more deals, then they can boost revenue while potentially reducing the amount they need to put into these advertising channels.

#10 Increase Productivity

Lastly, InsurTech tools can provide a huge productivity boost for insurance agents. Similar to saving money, InsurTech can save agents time. From quickly finding answers to customer questions and speeding up the underwriting process, to making data analysis more efficient, InsurTech can help agents get more done in less time. With this increase in productivity, agents can then dedicate more time where they see fit, such as meeting with clients to build relationships.

See How InsurTech Can Help You

As these examples show, InsurTech can provide multiple benefits to insurance agents and the carriers they work with. The InsurTech market continues to grow, providing agents with more opportunities to optimize and grow their businesses. If you’ve yet to dive in, now’s the time to explore the different areas of InsurTech before these tools become the norm and you fall behind the competition. InsurTech solutions like Wheelhouse can be a great place to start. You can easily add digital quoting capabilities to your existing channels while improving your marketing, such as through targeted landing pages.