Property/casualty insurance carriers that make their agents happiest—landing themselves repeatedly on top-10 rankings in agent surveys—are those that build the goal of doing so into their corporate cultures, a carrier consultant says.
Executive Summary
"Once and done" is one of the metrics a consulting firm uses to describe the relative strengths of agency relationships among P/C insurance carriers, but making it easier for agents to place business with a carrier is not a one-time exercise. It's a continuing aspect of carrier culture that is messaged from the top down, according to Nort Salz, CEO of Deep Customer Connections, a consulting firm that publishes an annual top-10 ranking of carriers by agents.“If I were the president of an insurance organization, I would very pointedly not have an individual responsible for making business easier [for agents]. I would instead say to all of my people that it’s everybody’s job to do that—and we each have to do it every day,” says Nort Salz, the chief executive officer of Deep Customer Connections, a consulting firm with a niche focus on the relationship between carriers and independent agents.
Salz, who spoke to Carrier Management recently about 10 years of research his firm has gathered about 11 performance factors that cause agents to write more business with one P/C carrier over another, was responding to a question about best practices among the carriers, C-suite involvement and the management structure supporting making-business-easier (MBE) activities.
