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There are more than 30 million small businesses in the United States today. They play a crucial role in the American economy and as a result, create a huge market opportunity for small commercial insurers today. However, with major technological innovations, changing customer expectations and increased competition, carriers being able to identify and take advantage of that opportunity is more challenging than ever before. Luckily, with these challenges come opportunities for small commercial insurance carriers to gain a competitive advantage, according to a new study by LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

For today's small commercial insurers, there are clear gaps within current processes and capabilities, as identified in the study. Carriers who identify the gaps and act immediately can now make meaningful progress towards attaining current and future goals. In order to gain a competitive advantage within the industry, it is crucial to provide elite, efficient and innovative service to meet the high expectations of customers today. It also underscores the importance of carriers not being complacent and that if they do not turn certain opportunities into business assets, it is likely that they will lag further behind changing market demands and evolving customer expectations.

In order to gain that advantage, here are five recommendations that align with the study's findings for commercial insurance carriers to be more successful when insuring small businesses.

Related: How to compete in the new commercial insurance industry

Mathew Stordy ([email protected]) is senior director of commercial insurance at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. These opinions are the author's own.