An Independent Insurance Agent is a trained and licensed professional with strong customer and community ties. They provide quality service and competitive prices while providing access to coverage from more than one company. The ability to quote and write insurance with multiple different insurance companies helps you keep clients by continually providing competitive rates and tons of options.

Unlike other insurance agents, your clients don’t need to change agencies if their insurance needs to change.

Start Building Your Brand around these ideals

• We are local community members who see you as a neighbor, nor just a policy number
• We will assist you when you have a claim
• We work as your consultant to determine your insurance needs, not just as policy pushers who are trying to meet quotas
• Offers one-stop-shopping for all lines of insurance.
• Can periodically review your coverage to keep up with your changing insurance needs, and proactively change your insurance companies to make sure that if your rates go up or coverage changes we can still keep you on the best carrier to fit your needs

These are great ways to bring customers to just any independent insurance agent, but why should they choose YOU specifically? Try to think about each one of these steps as part of building your brand:

• Tell your story. What ties you to that area, that community, that line of work?
• Do you pride yourself on being an insurance educator? Educating people on their policies is a service many agents provide, and helps your customers feel more at ease and confident that you are looking out for their best interest.
• Are you involved in the local community?
• Are you a family owned and operated business?
• Do you specialize in a certain market?

Collect the right data

In order to get a good quote, you need to make sure you're getting the right data. There are a number of ways to do this:

• Use quote sheets, many of which you can find in the agent portal.
• Use EZLynx PURL
• Create a great form on your website which captures all the information you need for a quote, custom to you.

Use Best Practices

Here are some best practices to follow for quoting personal lines products:

Auto

• Take advantage of early quote discounts, if applicable.
• Pay attention to your limits, prior limits are an especially important factor in rating.
• Length of ownership on vehicle can affect rate, so make sure you capture how long they've had it, not just how old the car is.
• Always offer Telematics
• Offer only pay in full or EFT options
• Know your carrier specific discounts, which might not always appear in your comparative rater. Knowing who your best carriers are for auto policies already helps you better read the quotes.
• Be sure to know who offers paperless discounts
• Use emails and input where you can, not just to e-sign, get the client set up to online billing and download the carrier app for self-service

Home

• Understand your carriers Coverage A binding authority
• Be aware that what breed of dog they have might affect the rates
• Not all carriers are willing to take trampolines and pools, and even those that do may have different rates for those coverages
• Know the comprehensive UW guidelines by carrier
• Know the infrastructure of their house — roof age, plumbing type, and how recently updates were done can affect rates
• Talk to your carrier rep about their inspection process

Set Expectations with your Clients

Coming from the Captive World- quoting will look different on the IA side. Let your prospect know that you are going to do research for them which can take some extra time. Take the time to research all carriers and options rather than sitting down to quote bind and issue on the spot. You create loyalty and provide an educational approach when the proposal is ready.

Create a standard practice for yourself

Here is a sample business practice that you could get yourself in the habit of:

1. Add your Prospect into Applied Epic
2. Close Activity
3. Edit / Add Contacts
4. Quote in your comparative rater, narrow it down to which carriers are the best fit
5. Complete the quotes on that carrier's website to ensure you have all the right discounts applied and parameters input
6. Present to client (video proposals are best!)
7. Get the insurance signed and the payment squared away
8. Enter the policy into Epic
9. Follow Up on Download
10. Attach all Documents and Emails
11. Close all Activities

A comparative rater is a tool for an independent agent to input specific details about a client and receive back real-time quotes from all the carriers in the rater.* This then helps you narrow down which carriers you're going to focus on for a specific customer and give ballpark estimates if you're meeting with them in-person.
*Most comparative raters, like EZLynx, are personal lines only.

Why use one? A comparative rater helps with:

1. Ensuring you are asking the right questions to your prospects right away
2. Creating home or auto packages in 10 minutes or less
3. Meeting your carrier's quotas for quotes per month (if any)
4. Creating confidence to your clients that you are truly finding them the best rate that you have available
5. Giving confidence to you that you are quoting with up-to-date rates, since carrier rates fluctuate so often
6. Giving you the ability to switch between applicant and co-applicants

ASNOA primarily uses EZLynx as our comparative rater for personal lines, and additional EZLynx setup and training can be found in the LMS, in addition to LIVE EZLynx sessions hosted by the Education department.  https://asnoa.com/asnoa-university/

Crafting a strong Proposal

Utilize a Digital Proposal. Give your prospects and in-depth look at your proposed insurance plan and immediately win them over using a well-designed insurance proposal template. Some carriers will offer a digital proposal tool already, but even without one of those tools you can use free recordings such as Loom or Zoom.

Present a proposal with options. Present a finalized proposal from your top 2 or 3 carriers. Each carrier proposal will look different, and you will have access to them directly in the carrier portal. Make sure with each carrier's options you know what tools you have to present the options.

If they accept, make sure their Onboarding is memorable.

Make sure that following a successful close, you don't just forget about your client. Make sure you've answered all these questions for them:

• How you can contact us
• What to do if you have to file a claim
• Our referral program

Lastly, it's always a good idea to include a link to leave you a review, since reviews are a huge component of more people finding you online.

Utilize a CRM to stay in touch

CRMs are a powerful tool to keep in touch with your clients and make sure that they don't forget about you or their policies. ASNOA offers discounts with multiple different CRM offerings, some of which also link up to Applied Epic. The benefits of a CRM include:

• You can use the client and policy data in your agency management system to deliver personalized communications throughout the customer lifecycle.
• Increase retention
• Gathering reviews
• Asking for the referrals
• Sending out an agency newsletter
• Send out important communications such as office closures
• Cross- sell campaigns
• Deepen customer trust with every interaction

Under development...