iMGA's Texas Personal Property Insurance Blog

Of course you can grow your agency by finding new customers or by adding new markets.

But the easiest and fastest way to grow your agency is to increase the number of products you provide for your existing customers. The sale is easier because you already have a relationship, plus studies have shown that customers with multiple policies stay with you longer. This multiplies your growth over time.

Fortunately as an iMGA agent you have a wide range of products to meet multiple needs for your clients:

• Homeowners – HOA, HOA+ and HOB options to cover a wide range of home values, ages and conditions.
• MobileHome – Specialty coverage for clients whether inside a mobile home park or not.
• Dwelling – TDP1, TDP1+ and TDP3 policies for owner and tenant-occupied dwellings.
• Vacant Dwelling – A specific option for hard-to-place vacant homes.
• Renters – Contents and Liability coverages for insureds who don’t yet own a home.
• Umbrella – Up to $5 million in primary and/or $5 million excess coverage for clients with the need to protect a wide range of assets.

All iMGA products focus on being EASY to use, with instant online binding, payment and document and flexible direct bill options. So as an iMGA agent you can focus on making sure you’re offering all your clients all the protection they need and growing your agency quickly in the process.

If you’re an agent who is not already working with us and would like a to grow your agency by offering a Texas Personal Property program that includes cutting-edge Renters, Dwelling, Vacant, MobileHome, HOA/HOA+/HOB and Umbrella products, just tell us a little about yourself.

Deloitte Consulting has released a new study of auto and home insurance policyholders and the results are significant for independent agents.

The online study of 1,080 each auto and home policyholders, titled “The Voice of the Personal Lines Consumer/Buyers in the driver’s seat”, reaches several relevant conclusions:

“there is a sizable group of consumers who still prefer the human touch in personal lines, choosing to establish a trusted relationship with an insurance professional who can help them shop for a policy (sometimes for more than one type of coverage) as well as show them how to navigate the claims process and be their advocate in case of a loss”

“fewer companies are dedicated to distributing through any one channel. Many are looking to reach prospects and more regularly communicate with policy- holders over multiple platforms, both to take business away from competitors as well as improve retention of their own customers”

“there are demographic factors at work that make some prospects more viable than others in terms of taking them away from the competition”

“while some respondents are committed to buying with an intermediary and others without, there is a significant percentage of “independents” that are more open to switching from agents to a direct purchase (or vice versa) given the right circumstances and enticements”

“overcoming suspicions about the integrity of insurers and agents can play a major role in drawing prospects away from rival carriers and channels”

“Price remains the biggest single element respondents consider when purchasing personal lines insurance. However… price is far from the sole decision point when a prospect is determining whether to become (or remain) a policyholder”

If you think your agency is “destined” to lose clients to direct sales, never to retrieve them again – that is definitely not true, especially if you offer homeowners insurance products. 39% of homeowners currently buying direct said their top preference the next time they buy a new policy is to work with an agent. The same was true with 30% of direct auto policy holders.

Homeowners Clients are Better

55% of homeowners who responded to the survey had been with their insurance agent for at least 6 years. Only 49% of auto insurance customers said the same.

Home policy owners are:

• Less likely to think buying direct would save them money (59% for homeowners vs. 67% for auto customers)
• Less likely to strongly agree that buying direct would be more convenient (29% vs. 33%)
• Less likely to consider price extremely influential in their decision (45% vs. 54%)
• Less likely to switch agencies (only 20% had been with their agency two years or less and many of those were younger consumers who had been purchasing homeowners coverage for a shorter period of time)

With all those great characteristics, it’s clear agencies need to attract homeowners policyholders as much as possible.

What’s the most important step in doing that, according to the survey?

Get Homeowners Policyholders as Young as Possible

Nearly half (45%) of homeowners said they had never switched carriers. So being there first made a huge difference to their agent and/or carrier.

iMGA products let you bring in homeowners clients that are buying their first home or mobilehome. Even before that you can offer your clients a renter’s policy through iMGA. Later if they purchase a rental dwelling or vacant dwelling, we can help you protect that for them also. Together we can help you build a book of quality homeowners clients that will make your agency more successful in the long run.

Higher retention, less price sensitivity, more appreciation for the value agents bring. Who wouldn’t want that? iMGA – and a focus on providing quality homeowners protection to your clients – can make that a reality in your agency.

That’s not just the name of a catchy Elvis tune – it’s also something we’ve been seeing too frequently lately.

Please be very careful when completing an application to make sure that the mailing address really is the insured’s mailing address. Most rental dwellings (and probably every vacant dwelling) should have different mailing and insured location addresses.

“Return to Sender” is a fun tune, but it’s no fun getting insured mail back from the post office, and your insureds don’t appreciate the delays and unnecessary cancellations that can occur either, so please be sure to get the right mailing address every time – especially on tenant-occupied and vacant dwelling policies.

Thanks!

Tomorrow is Good Friday and the first day of Passover.

Good Friday commemorates the death of Jesus and the start of Easter weekend. Passover celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt.

Billions of people will take time tomorrow to remember pivotal events that still resonate thousands of years after they occurred.

Very few events have an impact that big or that long lasting.

Every day, though, each of us has the chance to choose to make a positive impact or not. To do the minimum or make a difference. To be forgettable or do something worth remembering.

Our office will be closing at noon tomorrow to allow our staff time to remember.

Happy Easter and a joyous Passover.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

That also describes our experience last week.

Thanks to our outstanding agents we had already reached our best month ever by the middle of last week. We’d also had our best day ever just days before. Our newest products had quickly become very well received. All was fantastic.

Then everything fell apart. Thursday we were only barely able to issue a handful of policies. Friday we couldn’t even do that. We’ve been adding so many things to the system lately it was hard to isolate what might have caused the problem and find the real solution. Attempting to do so involved a lot of system restarts. Sometimes quoting was possible, sometimes it wasn’t. Same for payments and policy status information. Endorsements and new business binding was pretty much out of the question.

Of course that caused a lot of phone calls that normally wouldn’t be needed, which caused much worse phone, email and chat service than we are usually able to provide.

To those of you who were affected – we’re very sorry. You were wonderfully patient and understanding and we appreciate that very much, but we still feel terrible that you ever had to go through that.

Now What?

1. We found and fixed the root cause. It turns out the problem was directly related to the growth we’ve experienced. We became victims of our own success. Lesson: Test systems to be sure they can handle twice or three times the volume you’re at now. It’s great to have solid growth. It’s terrible to not meet the need when it arises.
2. We “fessed up”. Be straightforward. People will either appreciate your candor and forgive your imperfections or not be the type to cut you any slack anyway. Fortunately we work with awesome agents very willing to do the former.
3. Get something useful out of the experience. We have changes in place that will make quotes load faster and a checklist that should make troubleshooting easier moving forward. We also have a new understanding of how to more easily roll back product changes so we can confirm or eliminate those as the cause of any issues. Make sure you get some lemonade out of the lemons that come your way too.

What did we miss? What else do you think we could or should take away from this experience?

Are you an agent we don’t already work with? As you just read we’re not perfect. We definitely work hard to make things as easy as possible for our fantastic Texas Personal Property agents, though. If you’d like to become one, tell us a little about yourself.