Tech Helps Keep Moody Ahead

As important as it is to have a strong sales force to make an agency profitable, it can all fall apart if there is no solid support base to back them up. Thus, Moody Insurance Agency believes that by giving the right tools to capable, long-term employees and allowing customers access to their accounts over the Web, it can survive and prosper against banks and big brokers.

Troy Moody, the Denver-based agency's chief operating officer, points out that the agency's support staff is comprised of experienced representatives who have been on staff for a long timesome as long as 15 years. He considers this an advantage as technology changes.

“It makes the transition a lot easier,” said Mr. Moody. “You don't have to keep retraining new employees. Any employees we have brought on new have been due to growth. They kind of like the family type of environment we have here.”

With a retention rate hovering around 98 percent, Moody gives its customers access to online accounts, something some other agencies in the state can't, he observed.

Mr. Moody said clients can get details of their accounts, print certificates of insurance and auto identification cards, or even view benefits. The only thing they are not allowed to do online is change contractual language. “We prefer to do that in-house,” he said.

“When I started in the agency, and Web sites were just taking off, I thought it would be to write new business,” he noted. “After going a few years, I realized that it was an opportunity to provide services for clients.”

He added that “communication is the key to helping clients through their insurance decisions.”

A new piece of technology is “PaperPort,” a program that allows staff to integrate documents from different media for proposals or marketing purposes. The document can then be bundled and sent along to carriers. There are also copy machines in the office that are designed to fax, scan, copy and e-mail documents.

“A lot of what we do, we send out electronically,” he said. “It is very efficient.”

As for the staff, he noted, “they get pretty excited about the new technology we are adding.”

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, April 15, 2005. Copyright 2005 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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Tech Helps Keep Moody Ahead

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