2001 Best Practices Study

Analysis of Agencies with Revenues Between $1,250,000 and $2,500,000

“We spend a lot of time looking at what’s being done with technology in other service industries. If you confine yourself to what AMS or Applied is doing, you’re not going to have any idea what’s really going on out there.”

Increasingly, we see Best Practices agencies beginning to differentiate between insurance carriers that aggressively use technology to make business easier and those that do not.

E FFECTIVE P ROCEDURES /P ROCESSES

“Some of the companies are working hard to make it easier to do business with them. Others seem to be scratching their heads. The fact that it can still take a month to quote a fleet of cars, in this day and age, with all the technology that’s available, is just unacceptable. I am not sure we can afford to continue to do business with them.” “We have a large commercial department and a separate Business and Family unit to handle all the small commercial and personal lines business. The same Business and Family CSRs work both small commercial and personal accounts…I know without a doubt we’re finally making a nice profit on this business…We tried this approach two times before it finally stuck…technology finally caught up to the point this would work.” “We used to T-file everything…now we ‘scan & shred” every piece of paper that we deal with.” “We’re complainers. If something takes too long or if we’re duplicating our efforts, we go to work to fix it. It’s a constant process, it’s not like we review our procedures manuals every couple of years to see if we’re still current.”

In addressing procedures and processes, Best Practices agencies of this size begin to exhibit a level of sophistication in line with the size and scope of larger and larger agencies. Although bureaucratic solutions for the sake of bureaucracy are avoided at all costs, the volume and complexity of the insurance written by these agencies requires routine thoroughness to achieve effective and efficient processes. Many of the Best Practices agencies interviewed indicated that now, more than ever before, procedures and processes are updated constantly to keep up with new and improved technologies used to conduct business. Increasingly, more and more agencies are moving their procedure manuals on-line in an attempt to allow agency-wide access to current information. Finally, many Best Practices agencies indicate that certain insurance carriers are becoming much easier to work with than others in terms of faster turnaround times with fewer steps. These ‘faster and leaner’ carriers are likely to enjoy a significant advantage versus their slower moving competitors.

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