How one carrier transformed distribution management and turned routine agency visits into strategic powerhouses
In a recent project we spearheaded for a carrier client, we achieved a remarkable milestone in distribution management efficiency: the time required to prepare for agency visits, a critical component of the distribution process, was slashed from a minimum of two hours to a mere twenty minutes per visit. When projected across multiple agency visits over a year, this significant reduction culminated in conserving thousands of hours. These hours have since been reallocated to other critical tasks, optimizing overall productivity and strategic focus. Another outcome of the visit prep was creating a “visit report” that could be shared proactively before the agency visit. The visit report detailed what the insurer wished to discuss and enabled the agency to prepare accordingly. This improved the value of the agency visits incredibly.
In the complex and dynamic insurance industry, distribution management emerges as foundational and transformative for Carriers and Managing General Agents (MGAs). It is instrumental in shaping insurance products’ marketing and sales strategies and enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of delivering these products to the end consumers via brokers and agents. However, this crucial function has challenges, particularly in an increasingly digitalized era. How, then, can technology, and specifically platforms like Salesforce, drive the evolution of distribution management practices?
Let’s dig in.
Distribution Management for Carriers and MGAs refers to the strategies and processes implemented to streamline and enhance how insurance products are distributed to the end consumers. This includes managing relationships with brokers and agents, overseeing the flow of information and policies, and ensuring that products are effectively marketed to meet the consumers’ needs. Most US carriers and MGAs, notably over 70%, rely on a distribution model that leverages brokers and agents, underscoring these intermediaries’ critical role in the insurance landscape.
Our innovative approach to streamlining agency visit preparation has yielded dramatic results. This visualization demonstrates how our new process saves marketing representatives 400 hours annually – equivalent to nearly 50 workdays that can be redirected to strategic activities.
In the insurance industry, the prevalence of traditional tools like Microsoft Outlook for email, Excel for data management, and MS Word for documentation is a testament to their enduring utility. However, reliance on these tools can significantly contribute to the manual workload, making the distribution management process cumbersome and time-intensive. Each tool, while powerful in its right, operates in isolation, leading to inefficiencies and data silos that hinder the seamless flow of information.
Transitioning to integrated systems like Salesforce offers a solution to overcome these challenges. Unlike the disjointed use of Outlook, Excel, and Word, Salesforce provides a unified platform that automates and streamlines distribution management tasks. With Salesforce, what was once a manual and scattered process becomes automated, centralized, and efficient. Data that would be manually entered into Excel can now be automatically captured and analyzed within Salesforce, emails that clutter Outlook can be tracked and linked to customer records, and documents previously stored in various versions in Word can be centrally managed and accessed.
The adoption of Salesforce eliminates the need to juggle multiple tools and manually bridge the gaps between them. It offers comprehensive capabilities for managing customer relationships, tracking sales activities, analyzing performance data, and storing documents—all in one place. This saves significant time, reduces the risk of errors, and enhances decision-making with real-time insights and data-driven strategies.
Salesforce’s distribution relationship management system capabilities are enhanced by integrating it with core company systems, such as the policy administration system, the claims system, and the data warehouse. This integration allows data to be presented directly within Salesforce at the record level, enriched with powerful analytics that provides context to this data.
This approach simplifies accessing and interpreting complex data and enables a more nuanced understanding of operations, producer interactions, and overall business performance directly within Salesforce. It turns Salesforce into an even more powerful tool that manages relationships and provides a clear, actionable view of the entire distribution management process, backed by integrated data from across the organization.
Adding to the benefits of integrating Salesforce with core systems, another vital feature of this approach is the ability to meticulously track attendees at meetings and understand their interests or ‘appetite.’ This functionality not only facilitates the reporting of individuals attending various meetings with partners over time but also aids in collecting and maintaining up-to-date contact information.
The understanding that partnerships are built with people is at the core of successful distribution management. Tracking and managing interactions over time is not just about maintaining a database; it’s about fostering relationships, understanding needs, and evolving together in a dynamic marketplace. By facilitating this level of engagement and insight, Salesforce is an indispensable tool in navigating the complexities of distribution management while keeping a personal touch at the forefront of business operations.
While the buzz around digital transformation and its impact on the distribution of insurance products is undeniable, it’s crucial to recognize that some things remain constant amidst this change. At the heart of insurance distribution, now and into the foreseeable future, lie human relationships. Most insurance products are still distributed through personal interactions, underscoring the indispensable role of human connections in this sector.
In this context, leveraging technology like Salesforce becomes more than just a means to an end; it’s a strategic differentiator. Salesforce and similar sophisticated CRM systems are not only equipped to tackle the conventional challenges of managing vast amounts of data associated with these relationships but also set the stage for more innovative, efficient, and customer-focused ways of distributing insurance products.
These technologies provide a backbone for maintaining and enhancing the quality of human interactions at scale. By ensuring that customer preferences, interactions, and history data are organized and accessible, Salesforce empowers carriers and MGAs to make informed decisions, personalize communications, and strengthen the human connection vital to the distribution process.
As the insurance industry continues its journey through digital transformation, the importance of advanced CRM systems in distribution management cannot be overstated. For Carriers and MGAs, adopting such technologies is no longer a matter of choice but a necessity to remain competitive and relevant in an ever-evolving landscape. It’s about blending the new with the traditional, ensuring that while we embrace digital advancements, we continue to cherish and nurture the human relationships that are the lifeblood of insurance distribution.
Ready to revolutionize your distribution management? Our recent client success story showcases how we transformed a time-consuming agency visit process into a streamlined operation, saving thousands of hours annually. Discover how your organization can achieve similar results through our tailored approach. Schedule a consultation today to learn how we can help optimize your distribution strategy and drive measurable results.
Despite the technological strides, the journey could be smoother. The traditional approach to distribution management is fraught with challenges:
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