How to Grow Your Workers’ Comp Insurance Book

Workers’ compensation insurance not only helps an employee financially handle a workplace injury, but it can also save business owners from having to pay out large amounts of compensation claims from their own reserves. Plus, many businesses, even ones with just a few employees who do not typically do physical labor, are still legally required to carry workers’ compensation insurance. That provides insurance agents with a huge window to sell more workers’ comp policies to a wide range of business owners, including small businesses who may be purchasing this coverage for the first time.

For those wondering how to grow your workers’ comp insurance book, this guide will walk agents through selling more of this important policy line. Insurance agents who can connect with clients in need of these policies and explain the benefits of purchasing workers’ comp insurance — including general benefits as well as the benefits of purchasing through your insurance business in particular — can then set themselves up for closing more workers’ comp deals. 

If you want to grow your workers’ comp book, we can help. Click the button below to learn more. 

Identify Potential Workers’ Comp Clients

The first step regarding how to grow your workers’ comp insurance book is to identify potential workers’ comp clients. As mentioned, many business owners are legally required to carry workers’ comp policies. 

Businesses with employees who perform more intensive physical labor, such as construction companies or electricians, may seem more likely to have an injured worker and therefore need to provide workers’ compensation benefits. But you can’t narrow down the market based on business type alone. 

Even an employer with workers who primarily perform their jobs sitting at desks tends to need workers’ comp insurance, as accidents and injuries can happen anywhere. A work injury could involve anything from tripping over a power cord to needing medical treatment after straining to lift an object while on the clock.

So, an insurance agent who wants to grow their workers’ compensation insurance book should try to identify potential workers comp’ clients by:

Knowing Local Laws

Different states have different rules regarding who needs workers’ compensation insurance. That’s often based on factors like the number of employees. In California, for example, having just one employee necessitates workers’ compensation insurance, whereas in New Mexico an employer needs at least three employees to trigger this requirement. Knowing what’s required can help you find more relevant business owners to pitch and can help you filter out those who might not need to be on your radar.

Building Rapport With Relevant Small Business Owners

Getting to know small business owners can ultimately help you sell more policies. For example, if you build rapport with startup founders in California, you can be ready to pitch them as soon as they make that first employee hire, where they would then be required to have workers’ compensation coverage. 

Building rapport with other small businesses can also help you identify clients in need, whether that’s connecting with an employer who should but does not yet have this insurance or getting referrals to startups who are on the cusp of needing workers’ compensation coverage. 

Connecting with a startup group in your area, for example, could help you build relationships with those who are currently looking for workers’ comp coverage, are almost ready to purchase, or can point you in the right direction of another business that could use your services.

Explain the Benefits of Purchasing Workers’ Comp Insurance

As you identify who might be in need of workers’ comp policies, or at least start networking in these circles to gain the right connections, you can start to reel in potential clients. To do so, aim to explain the benefits of purchasing workers’ comp insurance, both as a whole and in terms of purchasing from you as an insurance agent specifically.

For example, you might explain general benefits such as:

Legal compliance:

Make sure prospects understand whether they’re legally required to obtain workers’ comp insurance. If they do need this coverage and are unaware of this requirement, you can make a big impact by bringing this to their attention.

Financial risk management: 

Even if an employer is not required to have this insurance, they might still want to manage their risk by providing workers’ compensation benefits. An injured employee could lead to an employer being liable for expensive costs like lost wages and medical treatments. Instead of paying these expenses out of pocket, an employer might prefer to have the backstop of an insurance policy covering a workers’ compensation claim.

Employee experience: 

Unfortunately, a workplace injury could occur at any time, and you want to make sure your workers have the protection that they need. Purchasing insufficient workers’ compensation insurance could not only lead to financial issues but it could sour how employees feel about your business overall if your insurance company doesn’t ultimately handle workers’ compensation claims properly. 

Even if employees ultimately get the financial compensation that they need to manage their workplace injuries, a difficult process could hurt how other employees feel about your business, as they may start to worry about what might happen to them financially if they get injured at work. That could even lead to them switching employers.

Make Your Differentiation Known

In addition to connecting with business owners on why they might want workers’ comp coverage in the first place, it can also help to explain why they should purchase from you. To make yourself as an insurance agent stand out and grow your book, you can offer points of differentiation such as:

• Providing exceptional service, where you walk clients through their different options so they can choose a policy that best fits their needs
• Having connections to the right insurance company for a client’s needs, as not all carriers may be ideal fits
• Offering detailed support and customer value, such as sending out client newsletters that help business owners understand how to reduce their risk
• Bundling options, such as enabling clients to purchase workers’ comp coverage along with professional liability insurance through you. Doing so can potentially save money compared with purchasing policies from separate agents, and it can also help streamline the process for business owners, who can appreciate you helping them easily cover multiple areas of risk.
• Smooth purchasing processes, both for initial policy signups and renewals. After you reel clients in, you want to be able to keep them coming back and gain more referrals to other business owners who need workers’ comp policies. Having a streamlined process that allows busy employers to easily purchase workers’ compensation insurance, such as through a platform like Wheelhouse, can help you grow your book.

Close Workers’ Comp Deals 

As you identify potential clients to target and start to reel them in by explaining the benefits of workers’ comp coverage, you then need to be able to close the deal. Using an InsurTech platform like Wheelhouse can go a long way toward growing your workers’ comp book, as prospects can easily generate bindable quotes on their own time directly from your website or other digital channels.

The platform enables online purchasing of workers’ compensation policies in any state you do business in. And as you narrow down your prospects, you can even set up targeted landing pages, such as those that include state-specific information, to help you close more deals.

Altogether, being able to identify a relevant audience of business owners to go after, being able to articulate why they should purchase workers’ compensation both in general and through you, and having the tools in place to close deals can help you solve how to grow your workers’ comp book.