Every insurance agency enjoys having a sales funnel full of leads and prospects. But figuring out which leads are likely to receive favourable quotes based on their risk profile, so they can be prioritized by an agent, is an incredibly challenging task.
In order to generate a vehicle insurance quote for a prospect for example, agents must contact each lead telephonically and gather all the necessary driver and vehicle information required by the carrier. This process can be extremely time-, effort-, and resource-intensive. So, before an agent makes such a costly investment, it is crucial that they ensure they are prioritizing and spending their energy on the right leads.
Agents frequently work on leads or prospects in the same order that they enter the sales funnel, rather than using the information they have access to through the Motor Vehicle Registry (MVR) and Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) databases to guide their lead prioritization decisions. This means agents are blindly working through an unorganized list of leads and collecting driver and vehicle information over the phone, which can take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour, per lead. This is not only painfully slow but is also approaching a level of slowness that could potentially compromise business operations.
What’s more, collecting driver and vehicle information telephonically is an error-riddled process. It is very easy for prospects to unintentionally provide the incorrect information, omit crucial information, or for an agent to incorrectly capture information, making it difficult for the agent to have complete confidence in the information they provide.
That's where MVR's or prefill solutions come into play to make the collection and transfer of data easier. However, the complexities around implementing and connecting agency systems to government databases make data challenging to access and orchestrate.
Agencies that choose not to commit to a lead pre-qualification strategy to determine the priority of each lead will experience a lack of focus and a lower conversion rate due to the risk factors that carriers must consider. Carriers can refuse to offer a policy to a prospect whose risk rating is too high. Alternatively, carriers may choose to offer the prospect a higher premium which the prospect is likely to reject. This not only results in wasted time and resources spent trying to rate, quote and bind a policy, but also the potential loss of a more attractive prospect to a competitor because they weren’t contacted in time. In the competitive insurance market, very often the first quote presented will likely win.
Agents that unintentionally sell insurance cover to high-risk clients can negatively affect the agency/carrier relationship as the carrier will be liable for paying out more claims. The agency will then have poor loss ratios with the carrier. Improving the pre-qualifying process through effective data management can improve the agency/carrier relationship.
Agencies that invest in a Data Integration Hub (DIH) like Synatic can connect their AMS and other operating systems to InsurTech solutions like SambaSafety that specialize in integrating regulatory, telematics, license and claims data sources into a single Risk Index, making it easy for agents to access, analyze and prioritize leads according to their risk. In addition to integrating system data, Synatic can be used to build integrations that assist agencies with connecting their AMS or CRM to government MVR and DMV databases in order to access driver and vehicle data, and in turn use that data to automatically prefill forms that are needed to quote a prospect. This reduces the chance of E&O and costly lawsuits.
Agents that address their lead prioritization issues with Synatic can save several hours each day that would have otherwise been spent manually collecting information telephonically, verifying that information using government DMV and MVR information, and then capturing that data into ACORD forms and AMSs. By streamlining their lead prioritization process when contacting their clients, agents only need to verify information before sending it to a carrier. These subtle improvements not only guarantee that insurable leads are prioritized helping to boost sales and shorten the rate-quote-bind process, but they also ensure underwriters spend less time reviewing policies because they have all the necessary information. The biggest benefit agents gain from using Synatic is being able to effectively manage risk and provide carriers with less risky opportunities, ultimately strengthening the agency/ carrier relationship.
