Insurance Aggregator – The Best Way Forward for Insurance Agents

Recommending a good insurance policy from a reliable insurance carrier alone will not make you the finest agent today. According to Insurance Journal, 57% of customers switched to better customer service providers. Another 80% are most likely to switch for personalized experiences. Hence, the market demands that you be highly responsive, informative and a reliable service provider. Insurance aggregator helps you become a perfect fit in the market.

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Insurance Aggregator

Do you know Amazon – the giant e-commerce aggregator? Amazon provides shoppers with a cataloged detail of products. Shoppers navigate through the website, find similar products, make comparisons based on prices, features, availability, manufacturer, etc., and make purchase decisions. Simultaneously, manufacturers benefit from exposure to a bigger market and broader network.

Likewise, an Insurance Aggregator is a shopping stop for insurance seekers. It is a website that gathers insurance-specific information from different sources and organizes them in one place. It fosters a network of insurance carriers, agents, and clients. While the insurance providers can display their products to a broader market, the shoppers find detailed information about insurance policies – price, coverages, premium, and other special features – in one stop.

Why the Insurance Aggregator?

Let’s unravel how an aggregator benefits you.

Surviving and Thriving

An article featured in 2014 in Insurance Journal reports, “since 2000, the number of insurance agents with revenue below $500,000 shrunk dramatically. While mega agencies will grow, the number of agencies with revenue below $2.5 million will plummet by 15% in 2019.”

Becoming a part of a broader network has become essential for insurance agents. Long-term survival is almost impossible if you intend to work in a silo. However, with an aggregator, you will be able to get a comprehensive picture of your market through information centralization. That will help you to plan your next move.

Keeping up with tech-savvy

The demographics are shifting. Statista reports that as of 2019, about 72.12 million are Millennials, the dominant generation in the US. Exposed to digital technologies from early years, Millennials are the digital natives. The shift in demographics open demands for tech-based services. Hence, you have to be able to play with the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices.

Keeping up with evolving digital platforms, analytics, artificial intelligence, and interactive marketing module is grueling. But through aggregators, you won’t have to worry at all. Your aggregator will set the platform and update it as required while you only have to learn the basics of relevant insurance software to reap the benefit.

Up-selling and Cross-selling

Aggregator comes with the benefits of structured data. It helps to keep your accounts on track. You can maintain records of approaching expiration dates of your clients’ insurance policies and help with renewals. Accordingly, you can reach out to ask their satisfaction with existing policies and help them if needed, and retain your clients.

Another benefit of using aggregators is access to information intelligence. For instance, you can get information about your existing homeowners policy client, putting his home for sale in an online market. Accordingly, you keep track and approach the client to sell another homeowner’s policy. Selling a new policy will not take as much work as during prospecting.

Escalating Processes and Conversion

When prospects request for quotes, they enter much of the data in the system. That means you will get an outline of the lead’s need before you contact them. Hence, you can develop a good rapport with the client. Additionally, you can focus on gathering other data to move further with the submission.

Through an aggregator, your clients can enjoy seamless insurance experiences. Whether for inspection, insurance proposal submission, or claim adjustments, the processing time is significantly reduced. An overall faster process will keep your client loyal to your services. It is an influential factor for customer retention.

Limiting frauds

According to III, auto, home, and business insurers in the US, pay $30 billion annually, which is almost 10% of the claim settlement amount, in fraudulent claims. Insurance carriers are turning towards data aggregators and producers for predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to keep the cases low.

Since aggregators are the powerhouse of information, you will have advantages in assessing your prospects and identifying any suspicion. Limiting fraudulent claims lessens cost to carriers, leading to decreased policy premiums. It also means you can be a reliable source of business for insurance carriers and your clients.

Is an Insurance Aggregator the Best Way Forward?

Traditionally, insurers would not contract agents who could not bring over a half a million dollars in premium volume. Hence, establishing an independent agency was considered remarkable. To overcome the challenge, the concept of insurance clusters came into the limelight.

Insurance clusters allowed agencies to collaboratively share an insurance carrier contract and spread the premium requirement by the insurance carriers. However, insurance clusters had two major loopholes: Lack of control over the quality of business written and lack of professional management as an organization.

Insurance aggregators are the improved version of insurance clusters. Aggregators focused on market access, profit sharing, networking with insurance carriers, and so on. An aggregator is the association of insurance agencies as well as the umbrella network of clients and carriers. Hence, it is clearly better than independent agents acting alone, or an insurance cluster.

Agents and Aggregators in the Future

What does the futuristic picture of aggregators and agents’ relationships look like?

According to Accenture, aggregators are rapidly growing around the world. In the UK, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, India, insurance aggregators are progressively attaining the market share. The trend demonstrates reliability of aggregators in a variety of markets. Hence, the future of aggregators is promising.

While aggregators help clients get quotes in just a few clicks, agents’ scope will not diminish. You will remain a valuable asset in the value chain. The automated system only provides quotes for general policy but lacks the human touch to the service. The system cannot provide results for special requests and does not offer expert advice. For all these reasons, clients continue to seek agents.

On the other hand, carriers’ progressive partnerships with aggregators mean greater competition. Carriers will need agents to bring in new clients while ensuring that existing ones do not switch to other insurers. Since you are experts in understanding prospects and making sales, you will have the upper hand.

Insurance aggregators are a disruptive force in the insurance industry. Why not become a part of the winning strategy and be on top of the competition?