Archives for Systems

How to set up Credit Card AutoPayMany iMGA customers have taken advantage of the ability to sign up for auto check payment of their insurance premium.

When they do that they are much less likely to ever miss a payment or incur a late fee. Plus they don’t have to worry about mailing a bill or going online.

Well now iMGA clients who prefer to pay by credit card can take advantage of the same benefits.

That’s right – we now offer automatic recurring credit card payments! Simply pay your client’s invoice with their credit card as normal, then click on the box to “Save for Recurring Payments” and the minimum due will be paid on the due date automatically. They’ll still get a reminder notice each month with the amount we’ll apply to their card and the date we’ll process the transaction.

And of course they’re free at any time to discontinue the automatic payments or change their AutoPay account if they change their mind.

If you’re a Texas insurance agent who would like to offer personal property products from a company focused on making things as easy as possible, start the process here.

HeartbleedThe past few weeks have seen two major internet security problems discovered. One involved Internet Explorer. The second is something called “Heartbleed”.

Internet Explorer

The Department of Homeland Security found a flaw so severe in Internet Explorer that they recommended no one use it until Microsoft fixed the problem. Disabling Flash was a temporary fix, but the vast majority of users were fully exposed to takeover of their computer. As Microsoft said, the error “could allow attackers to run malicious software on the user’s computer — and even gain the same level of access to the computer as the real user.”

Fortunately Microsoft has been able to release a fix. Be sure you have Windows Update set to “automatic” and that the fix has been installed. Another approach would be to switch from Internet Explorer to using a different browser like Chrome or Opera. The iMGA web site has no issues supporting any of the major modern browsers. The same may not be true for all web sites you use, though.

Heartbleed

There has also been a lot of chatter lately about “Heartbleed”. Many of the internet’s largest and most popular web sites were compromised.

Should you worry?
Yes, and no.

Heartbleed did NOT risk your computers, only internet servers.

Heartbleed is a problem in a particular version of an encryption library called OpenSSL. It allowed random access to whatever might have been stored in the memory of a web site’s server at the time of the attack. That means it’s possible your user name and password on an exposed server might have been compromised.

iMGA was not compromised. We never used that version on our web site. It is important that you change your password on any site that was compromised. iMGA was not, but you’re welcome to change your password on our site at any time.

Change your passwords

This is a good time to change your password across other sites that were at risk from the bug and have patched their servers. Note that if their servers are not yet patched, you will need to change your password once they have. CNET is keeping a list of the status of the top 100 sites and whether they have been patched.

Changing your passwords is especially important if you, like most people, use the same password and email address on multiple services. If you’ve done this, then a hack into any one of those services risks exposing your login information for multiple services.

The easiest way to manage the project to change your passwords (and make sure they’re more safe moving forward) is to use a password management program like LastPass (available free) or 1Password. It’ll help you set up truly secure passwords for all web sites and you’ll only have to remember one.

CalendarSometimes it would just help a lot if a bill were only due a week or two earlier – or a few days later – every month.

Now iMGA customers can change their due date if doing so would help.

The woman on a fixed income who would really like her bill due on the 25th, the couple on social security who like to pay all their bills by the 7th, the family who would prefer to arrange this new bill to come just after the paychecks they get on the 15th – all of those insureds can have their preferences met.

Just call and let us know what date you would prefer. If you want to move the date up (make it earlier), just tell us. If you want to move it back a small payment may be needed to cover the additional premium for the days included in the change. Either way we can take care of it quickly and easily.

Custom payment dates – just one more way iMGA is working to make insurance easier for our agents and their clients.

The most common reason for cancelled policies is simply failure to pay. For every policy cancelled you have to sign up another new customer just to stay even, and growing your insurance agency becomes much harder.

Even if you’re able to win the client back, you – and they – will face unnecessary costs and difficulties in dealing with cancellations and reinstatements.

All of that can be avoided if you help your clients keep the insurance they already have. At iMGA we’ve made that much easier to do. When you log in the list of policies in Pending Cancellation status will automatically show, with the most recently modified policy at the top of the list:

Agent Dashboard-Pending Cancels

To review the details of any of the policies displayed just click on the policy number shown.

To see the full list of all your Pending Cancellation policies, simply click on the “To Search” link:

Pending Cancels List

You can then call or email the clients who are at risk for canceling their policies and avoid unnecessary problems. Your clients will thank you and your agency growth will increase – truly a win-win.

At iMGA we work hard to make things as easy as possible for all our independent insurance agents. If you’re a Texas agent who sells homeowners, dwelling, renters, vacant and mobile home policies, please contact us about becoming an iMGA agent.

Old Web Site

The iMGA home page circa 2009.



If you’re reading this then you already know the big news: we have a brand-new look to our website.

Our old website served us very well for our first few years of operation, and we made a few small changes on it over time, but it was time for a fresh look and a more informative format.

New Web Site

The 2013 home page with just one of the rotating primary image banners.


The Update Includes Important Changes

  • The new site is mobile-friendly and incorporates social media connections (links to our Twitter account, Facebook page and LinkedIn company page) at the top of every page.
  • We separated the Make a Payment and Report a Claim information into two distinct pages to reduce confusion.
  • The new web site integrates the blog and all of its articles with the site as a whole, making it easier for agents to find useful information.
  • We have moved the site to a specialty hosting firm that will ensure that it is more responsive, faster loading, and consistently and automatically backed up.
  • This change separates our web site front end from our agent portal, ensuring that we do not have a single point of failure and an outage with either one would not cause a total outage.
  • While our old site used a content management system that allowed for fairly easy page additions and changes, the new site is on a much more powerful, secure, more frequently updated and easier-to-use system. As a result we’ll have more flexibility, control and security going forward.

Our new site is just one of the steps we are taking to make life easier for our agents. We hope you like it and welcome your comments, suggestions and questions about it or any of our Texas Personal Property products.

Installment InvoiceWhen we introduced our billing system we tried to make things as easy as possible on the customers. One of the ways we did that was to automatically spread any underpayment across all future installments. So, if their payment had been $100/month and they missed a month and had four payments left, the remaining payments would be $125 each instead of $100.

You might or might not be surprised by how many confused calls that created.

We definitely were surprised. We had tried to be nice, but in doing so we had made things too complicated. So we’re returning to simple. As of now, if the insured’s bill is $100 per month and they miss the bill (or under-pay the bill), the full amount they missed will be added to the minimum due on the next installment, exactly the way it works on pretty much every other bill (credit card, utility, etc.).

We’ve also found that a small number of customers cause the majority of late payments, cancellations and reinstatements. To encourage those customers to keep on schedule, we’ve introduced a $9 late fee. It will be applied to any invoice that is not paid by its due date.

Late payments and under-payments cause lots of problems and significant service expense and issues. These changes will minimize the number of customers who receive cancellation notices or otherwise require additional special handling, and should make understanding the billing much easier for both you and your customers.

We know retaining customers and preventing unnecessary additional interactions is important to you. We look forward to these changes helping reach those goals.

We are always trying to make things more useful and easier for our agents.

So we’re very happy to announce our newest system features:

New Saved Searches

New Search ButtonsNow when you see the Search Results page (by typing anything – or nothing at all – in the quick search window at the top of every page and hitting enter or clicking on the magnifying glass icon) you’ll not only see policies and/or quotes listed, you’ll also see two new buttons. Those two buttons (“select filter” and “save as…”) are the key to the great new Saved Search functionality.

Viewing Saved Search FiltersFirst of all, some basic searches have already been saved for you. These include

  • All New Policies – a list of only new policies, with the policies most recently issued or endorsed at the top of the list,
  • All Quotes – a list of only saved quotes, with the quotes most recently saved at the top of the list, and
  • All Renewal Policies – a list of only renewal policies, with the policies most recently issued or endorsed at the top of the list.

To access any of these saved searches at any time from the Search Results page, simply click on the Select Filter button, then click on the name of the saved search you want to access. Saved Search Name DisplayedWhen you’re accessing a saved search you’ll see the title of the saved search at the top of the search results page. To reset your search, simply search for something else in the quick search box or Advanced Search window.

Advanced Search AccessYou can generate your own saved searches. To do that, you probably want to use the Advanced Search function. You can access that on the Search Results page by clicking on the plus sign to the right of the words Advanced Search. That opens a large window that lets you set all sorts of parameters for what you would like to see:

Advanced Search Window

 

Once you can see those search results, click the Save As button, give the saved search any name you’d like.

New Dashboard

We’ve added two saved searches to the main dashboard page – all Quotes and All New Policies. At a glance, without even having to go to the search page or type anything in, you can see the 10 most recent saved quotes and new policies.

We love talking to you, our valued agents, but we know sometimes you just need a change made to a policy as quickly as possible.

So we’ve made it so you can do the most common changes whenever you need.

For example, on a Dwelling policy you can do a Non-Money endorsement or an Agent Money Endorsement by selecting Actions/Modify Policy. On the bottom of the Policy detail page you will see two buttons:

Endorsement Buttons

The Non-Money endorsement lets you change the Bill To, Pay By, Insured Name and information, Mailing Address and Additional Interest/Mortgagee information.

Non-Money Endorsement

The Agent Money endorsement lets you change the age of the roof, the Other Structures limit and the Dwelling Update information. Simply select the dwelling you want to modify:

Agent Money Endorsement Intro

Then add or correct the information:

Agent Money Endorsement Detail

You can change all the same information on a Homeowners and MobileHome policy also.

On Renters policies you can add or delete Additional Insureds or make changes to Additional Insured name and address.

This is just another small part of how we work hard to make things as easy as possible for our agents.

Whether it’s a new policy or one that’s been in force for months, you can see at a glance when the next payment is due, and how much, if any, is due.

Simply:

  1. Log in to iMGA.biz.
  2. Look up the policy by typing the policy number or any part of the insured’s name into the quick search box at the top right of any page.
  3. Glance to the right of the screen (under “Payment Details”) for the next Payment Due date and Amount Due.

Agency Sweeps are not instantly processed, so don’t instantly reduce the Amount Due. They are processed at 10:30 each evening. Until then, the pending sweep amount can be seen under the Accounting tab/Sweep Transactions. You can tell that it is pending because there is no posted date or confirmation number – those are added once the sweep is processed.

iMGA Policy Billing Screen

We hope this helps make writing Texas Dwelling, Homeowners, MobileHome, Renters and Vacant policies as easy as possible for you – and any time you see something we can do better, please speak up!

We’re constantly working to make things easier for our agents and their clients, and this New Year brings a great leap forward on that front at iMGA. We now can offer automatic recurring check payments!

Some call these Easy Pay, some call them Auto ACH, some call them Recurring EFT, but no matter what you call them your clients will love the convenience of this new option.

To Sign Up:

  1. Look up your customer’s policy in Policy Manager.
  2. Select Actions/Make Payment.
  3. Enter the payment information for a Check payment.
  4. Click the box next to “Automatically use this account for future payments”.
  5. Click Submit.

It’s that easy!

iMGA Payment Options

Other Great Options Too

If your agency is set up with Sweep capability, you can also pay any amount on any policy by clicking Sweep as the payment type and entering just the amount you wish to pay.

If the policy is eligible, you can also enter Credit Card payments. If the policy is not eligible for Credit Card payments, the Make Payment page will show that clearly and not provide the option.

We hope you find these options make doing business with iMGA as easy as possible. If you’re a Texas personal property insurance agent who would like a market that works this hard to make things easy, take the first step in connecting with iMGA.

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