Boston, MA (Sept. 29, 2014) – Inside the producer management life cycle, many stages are involved in getting an insurance producer (also called an agent or insurance broker licensed by a state’s insurance department) ready to sell, beginning with producer onboarding. For most insurance carriers, this routine process for producer verification and appointment is fraught with inefficiencies and unnecessary costs. It typically takes a few weeks and relies on labor-intensive processes involving hand-written applications and lengthy procedures. Producers must wait for slower carriers, which often lose producers to competitors that are able to onboard faster.
Aite Group’s new report, Next Generation Insurance Producer Management: The Race Is On, reveals that many U.S. property and casualty (P&C) and life and annuity insurance companies now want to modernize their producer management applications. This is the next evolutionary step with producer “ease-of-doing-business” initiatives but also provides an opportunity for insurance companies to achieve significant competitive advantage by better linking detailed strategic and performance objectives to their producers’ compensation plans.
Aite Group has assessed 10 large U.S. insurance companies now in different stages of implementing a complete, holistic vision of producer management that rationalizes, simplifies, and significantly improves producer onboarding as well as credential, compensation, and performance management.
For independent producers
- Independent producers who sell through multiple insurance companies want a single CRM user interface that is already embedded in their existing workflows to complete their onboarding, new-business submission, in-force business, and compensation-reporting requirements.
- They do not want to access multiple insurance company-specific producer portals, all with different, often manual, workflows.
For solution providers
- Aite Group noticed a tendency for most solution providers to focus primarily on the inside-out requirements of the insurance company rather than the outside-in requirements of producers. Aite Group believes this is a mistake.
- Aite Group found that insurance companies want easier, real-time access to accurate producer-credentialing data from companies like Vertafore and RegEd.
“Upcoming strategic disruptors driven by the trend toward more granular types of risk management, personalized types of insurance coverage combinations, and value-based, ad hoc compensation plans will further increase the pressure on insurance companies to modernize their producer management applications,” says Todd Eyler, research director in Insurance at Aite Group.
About Aite Group
Aite Group is an independent research and advisory firm focused on business, technology, and regulatory issues and their impact on the financial services industry. With expertise in banking, payments, wealth management, capital markets, and insurance, Aite Group’s analysts deliver comprehensive, actionable advice to key market participants in financial services. Headquartered in Boston, Aite Group works with its clients as a partner, advisor, and catalyst, challenging their basic assumptions and ensuring they remain at the forefront of industry trends.
For more information, visit www.aitegroup.com.
Source: Aite Group
