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Analysis of Agencies with Revenues
Between $1,250,000 and $2,500,000
C
ARRIER
R
ELATIONSHIPS
“We take the key contacts at each of our
lead carriers to the lake with us for a long
weekend each year and essentially tell
them, ‘we want you to know how much you
mean to the success of our business.’ You
wouldn’t believe how much they appreciate
that and how hard these people work for us
from that point on. I have other agencies
calling me up asking me exactly what we’re
doing at these parties!”
“We assign specific individuals throughout
the organization the responsibility of
keeping relationships with our key markets
on-track … no one person can effectively do
that job.”
“It becomes so much harder to do business
with the carriers that aren’t moving forward
with their systems and procedures. At
some point, if a policy takes 50% more time
to write with one of our preferred companies
versus an aggressive “newbie,” we’re going
to move the business. We’re finding that
we need to reassess our key markets much
more frequently than we expected to.”
“Most agents want to complain about what
the companies do wrong without ever
asking what our role in the relationship
looks like. Very few agencies, as business
partners to the carriers, could stand up to
the scrutiny we apply to them. When you
back up and realize that these are people just
like we are trying to do their best with what
they’ve got, it takes on a different feel. We
need each other and we need to work from
that point forward.”
The
Best Practices
with regard to carrier and vendor relationships
continue to center around the careful selection and support of a
select number of key business partners.
However, many of the same frustrations that have characterized the
agent-carrier relationship continue to be voiced by
Best Practices
agencies: frequent changes in business strategies and appetites on
the part of carriers, increased pressure on agents for more and
more volume, and a growing gap between insurance carriers that
‘get it’ technically and procedurally and those that do not.
As one agent stated, “We felt (and still feel) that we had the right
carriers for the 90’s. We have serious doubts that this same group
is going to work for us in the new millennium.”
The
Best Practices
of agencies with positive agency-carrier
relationships tend to center around maintaining open and honest
communication; frequent personal interaction; a mutual, sincere and
sustained commitment; joint planning efforts; and simply writing
profitable business.
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