Viewpoint: Why Brokers Struggle to Navigate Data Complexity and What to Do About It

The insurance industry relies on data to assess and price risks, and to develop products that meet policyholders’ needs. Insurance agencies and brokerages collect data about customers and their risks, and this data in turn is exchanged with underwriters to quote and bind. Ideally, data flows smoothly through all the various systems agents and brokers use every day. Reality is quite different. Agents and brokers are challenged by complex data and systems that don’t all communicate well. The result is a difficult navigation that saps intermediaries’ productivity and slows their growth prospects and impairs the customer experience.

One source of complication is agency mergers and acquisitions. Long deployed to scale growth, M&A among agencies and brokerages continues at a fast pace. Unfortunately, consolidation brings complexity to the information technology ecosystem. Diverse operating models in the insurance space mean acquired firms often use different agency management systems (AMS). These systems have become increasingly sophisticated, accommodating different workflows and tracking policies, customer data and sales pipelines. The downside is not all AMS communicate easily with one another, leading to data bottlenecks and time-consuming integrations.

AMS are good at what they do, providing efficient ways to manage agency and brokerage businesses. The leading core systems have features such as real-time policy and commission tracking, workflow automation, quoting and policy issuance, and client communication tools. AMS cannot, however, do everything an agency or brokerage needs to sustain growth and profitability.

Long-term growth and profitability for insurance intermediaries requires a clear, harmonized view of all systems and access to the data residing in each of those to inform strategic decision-making.

Imagine a decision intelligence platform that sits atop existing systems and can ingest data from all of them, without requiring complex integrations. At the same time, the platform has a record of reducing data errors and standardizing more than 1,000 product classes to deliver a simplified, holistic view of an intermediary’s growth opportunities. Such a platform already exists. Broker Insights’ VISION platform doesn’t replace AMS or other tools; it works seamlessly with all of them, to give agents and brokers timely, relevant insights from the data those tools already hold.

A holistic view of a firm’s placement submission data can sharpen producers’ focus on the largest and most profitable opportunities. Instead of chasing data from various systems to complete administrative tasks, agents and brokers can put their time and energy into achieving real growth and improving customer service.

Here are just a few of the advantages such a platform can provide to agents and brokers:

• Distinguish organic growth from incremental business with existing customers
• Understand which insurance markets have quoted which risks previously, saving time in the placement process
• Channel new business submissions toward insurers with which the firm has strong relationships, to enhance commission growth
• Envision growth opportunities for placing adjacent coverages across the firm’s book of business