Diversifying Your Business and Narrowing the Gap

by: Oliver Travieso

While many agents join networks like ours simply for help accessing appointments, many agents approach our network seeking ways to diversify their business. In this particular insurance climate, having a diverse range of options to satisfy customers will be crucial to both retention and growth. From premium hikes, to tightening risk guidelines, clients will be feeling the pain and effects of inflation. Independent agents are better situated to be able to help consumers through this period of time, however, there is still a large portion of the independent agent population with a heavy, primarily Personal Lines focus.

Further hardening of that market is forcing agents to look elsewhere for growth opportunities. You may be one of them, and that’s okay!  As a Smart Choice agent, you have a host of options to ease your way into diversifying into the Commercial Insurance space.

When writing small business insurance, the concepts will feel quite familiar to primarily Personal Lines agents.

Property, General Liability, Auto, and Umbrella are the foundational coverages, and additional exposures businesses face (Workers Comp, Cyber, EPLI), are easily learned.  It’s not difficult to understand, and simply takes focus and commitment to applying energy towards it.

As an Independent Agent, you’ve likely come across a commercial risk, and it seemed impossible to place. Maybe there was a line of business that did not fit within the standard market, but the rest of the account did. The entire account was submitted to the standard carrier, and it was declined. Now what?

Our Territory Managers and State Directors often uncover opportunities like this with our agents and elevate them to the Commercial team at the home office. Our team challenges ourselves to be creative on solutions for each account, by engaging our underwriters to investigate which lines of business match up with the standard company, and then seeking out one of our Express Markets partners to place the more hazardous line of business to round out the account.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss some of these challenges on the Insurance Town podcast, where David Wilson, Vice President of Express Markets, joined me and the “Mayor of Insurance Town” for a deep dive on this and other important topics.

In this particular episode of the podcast, we covered the following:

• Transitioning from a PL to CL.  How we did it and how you can do it.
• Changes in the marketplace, including rapid growth of E&S and NSA opportunities.
• Niches – identifying opportunities and developing acumen
• The impacts of technology
• The benefits of SSCL and how agents of all sizes utilize it.
• Advice to agents seeking to grow CL  (buy a book, identify your PL clients occupation through mgt system and start asking for their CL)
• SC benefits – market access, lower commitments, consultative marketing, non-exclusive, a la carte participation.
• Compensation and Profit sharing - better comp deals, lower thresholds, leadership benefits

David Wilson & Oliver Travieso - Talking Commercial Insurance W/ Smart Choice