With the current hard market, carrier delays, and increasing rates and coverages required, retailers are in a difficult position: maintaining adequate coverage for your insureds while shopping different carriers and finding the lowest rates. Maintaining strong and healthy relationships with your named insureds requires not only accuracy, but also that the coverages selected are sufficient and adequate in the event of a loss. To keep current clients satisfied, your renewals should be proactive, timely, and most importantly, based on accurate information.
But when you’re comparing quotes and coverages for your entire book of business, the pre-renewal process can get complicated – and risky. More steps mean more opportunities for mistakes, and if anything is missed and a new policy doesn’t provide adequate coverage, liability is 100% on your agency. Ensuring that the amount of coverage is satisfactory means more than just peace of mind for your insureds. It’s often a legal or network requirement for certain types of policies, and underinsurance leaves both you and your client vulnerable to loss.
Let’s look at three questions you should be asking about your insurance policy renewal process to ensure you aren’t opening your agency to unnecessary risk.
Is your AMS data always consistent and accurate?
The information in your agency management system is crucial – you are liable if there are inaccuracies. With 4-6 different quotes for each client and minute differences in coverage for each, updating your AMS with new data is no small task. In the “renewal scramble,” stress is high and mistakes can happen. Your account managers are already at capacity, and they don’t have the bandwidth to spend hours meticulously moving data over and reviewing it for mistakes. You don’t want to share inaccurate or incomplete information with carriers, and even small errors could result in coverage gaps.
How we help: Our teams work as a capacity lift for your agency – it’s like hiring extra help, but we’ve done the interviewing and training already. We follow your best practices to ensure the AMS is updated with accurate data, so your team doesn’t have to worry about this extra busywork and can focus on creating a positive experience for clients.
Are you comparing apples and oranges?
Especially when you’re remarketing a policy, it’s critical to perform quote checks before renewal – not after the policy is bound. Without that extra step comparing quotes, you’re creating a huge potential source of error and risk. It’s hard to track different premiums and coverages through different carriers across multiple books of business, where each client’s circumstance is unique – there’s too much work for your team and too much room for error.
How we help: Our team lays out information in a user-friendly format, highlighting discrepancies and differences between policies. Everything is collected into a single source document for easy reference, giving your agents the information they need to make the best recommendation for every insured. This helps to ensure adequate coverage that accounts for all new data and fully protects the policyholder.
Are your insureds well-informed and confident?
You can’t rely on your clients to be insurance experts – doing the due diligence and providing the right information is on you. Although it’s crucial to educate your insureds about their coverage options, they are ultimately trusting your agency to ensure they aren’t under- or over-insured. You must understand the customer and their needs, and help determine which coverages will adequately protect them.
How we help: Not only is our process more efficient for your agency, it’s also better for your insureds. Seeing the information gives them peace of mind that they’re making the right choice and helps them feel confident that your business is reliable. Our pre-renewal checklist helps ensure the right coverages and right amounts are on the policy to avoid any major catastrophe or unexpected detrimental situation. When you’re confident in your process, your insureds are confident in their coverage – and in you.
Improve your insurance policy renewal process
Want to go the extra step during pre-renewal, ensure your data’s integrity, and keep your clients happy? Our offshore services provide you with a dedicated team to handle your pre-renewal process and help ensure adequate coverage for your named insureds. We don’t just take quote comparisons off your plate – our BPM teams can also handle the other time-consuming steps that create risk and prevent you from focusing on what’s important. Find out how to extend your team with our expert support.
