by: Back9 Insurance
September is Life Insurance Awareness Month! Regardless of your level of Life Insurance expertise, including those with no experience whatsoever, your agency can now use simple, easy-to-install software to help you drive more sales without distraction from your core business.
This is true for both personal and commercial lines practitioners. A Life Insurance Policy can be as valuable as other products sold by P&C agents who hold a life license, but the sales process is typically considered too time consuming and cumbersome.
Life insurance software solutions are changing that mindset. Here, we review the elements an agency should consider when choosing the right solution for their business.
What is Life Insurance Software?
Life insurance software enables insurance professionals with the tools and systems they need to sell, market, and manage each transaction from submission to commission without interruption of daily P&C operations.
A good system will integrate with P&C comparative raters, have simple plug marketing tools for agency management systems and should work flawlessly with marketing software solutions.
Therefore, there are three elements that a complete solution should support:
- Consumer and agent facing comparative rater
- A dashboard to manage quotes, leads, applications and commissions, and
- Marketing tools
What are the Benefits of using Life Insurance Software?
Perhaps one of the greatest advantages that a good platform offers are simple settings to drive leads and applications to licensed agents to complete the transaction for you. This is particularly useful for those with no life insurance expertise.
The most successful fullservice P&C agencies leverage life insurance technology to round out accounts, significantly increase retention and add to their bottom lines. This is the same for any size organization.
Today’s solutions are scalable from a single practitioner to the largest distributors. Many agencies struggle with hitting their growth and EBITA goals. Commissions from life insurance sales are largely front-end loaded.
This structure enhances your ability to drive revenue faster while your agency builds incremental revenues from P&C renewals.
Recent Trends
Insurance consumers require quick, concise, and clear information. Life insurance comparative raters are often made public on agencies’ websites.
In fact, the most efficient platforms offer consumers a way to shop, compare and apply in one simple journey without having to speak with an agent during the sales phase. Online life insurance transactions have increased dramatically over the last few years.
Support by text and live chat are quickly becoming the best way to insert the insurance professional into the process if the prospect elects to do so.
Many existing P&C agency management systems, raters, and marketing platforms can set up triggers such as policyholder birthdays, P&C renewals, P&C purchase thank yous, and more to send ongoing messages to the consumer to drive sales 24/7.
Tips for selecting a provider.
Many providers offer a full range of services with no charge. Overrides are paid by the insurance carrier to the provider who acts as a GA and thus the carrier’s published street level commission is passed on to the source agent writing the business while the software provider retains the override to manage the technology and related operating costs.
It’s always good to ask you provider if there are special offers if you are a part of network, cluster, or aggregator.
Providers that charges fees often bundle services to include such things as custom website and marketing tools while others offer these as complimentary. We suggest you examine these items carefully as you may already get these features from your current agency management system or marketing software.
Mark Chibbaro, President of Enterprise at BackNine Insurance and Financial Service, notes that consumers need and demand different life insurance options just as they do with P&C. A good provider should have 10-20 term carriers and an array of permanent or whole life products. As in the P&C business, life insurers target different demographics and classes of business.
Providers that offer “quick” issue policies are typically priced well above fully underwritten business. Using such a platform could expose you to unhappy clients and potentially loose P&C business.
It’s best to offer a choice of “quick issue” and fully underwritten with medical exams and let the consumer decide what is best for them. Providers that offer P&C agents “quick issue” solutions often do this to attract agents with a quick and easy solution.
P&C agents know insurance is best served in the hands of an advisor who offers a tailored approach with protection services for all budgets, situations and life stages. Click here to learn more.