Travelers Looks To Boost Agent Education

How does a property and casualty insurance company show its commitment to its agent community and help to develop a strong and successful independent agent work force?

For St. Paul, Minn.-based Travelers, the answer is to provide its independent agent partners with information and continuing education opportunities to meet the challenge of professional development.

To reach that goal, Travelers has developed an educational training program over the past five years.

“We made a decision that we were going to dedicate a little more time, effort and energy to agent education,” explained Nancy Fitzgibbon, vice president of enterprise training for Travelers.

Ms. Fitzgibbon noted that about five years ago the company developed a new producer training program aimed at licensed agents with a minimal amount of experience–anywhere from six-to-12 months. The three-week course delves into lines of business, ISO-based coverage forms, some Travelers products, but primarily focuses on commercial insurance.

The program is for someone hired by an agency, who has their license but is still new to the business and “is ready to learn a little more in depth about the commercial lines products they will be selling,” she said.

In 2005, the program was launched in Hartford, then expanded last year to St. Paul.

It is now part of what the company has dubbed “AgentU,” a comprehensive training program “custom designed to meet the educational needs of Travelers' agency partners,” the company said in a statement.

AgentU takes a three-prong approach, Ms. Fitzgibbon explained.

For new agents taking the enhanced program, the training has become more regionalized with more accessibility in other parts of the country.

Last year, classes were offered in Atlanta and Chicago. This year they are offered in Dallas, Seattle and Northern California. The program is still offered in Connecticut and St. Paul, but the regional aspect aims to make it easier for agents to access it.

The class is offered six-to-seven times annually in locations throughout the year in various parts of the country.

Ms. Fitzgibbon said another advantage to these regional training courses is that they give agents an opportunity to meet their local Travelers representatives, who are often the course instructors.

The second prong is called instructor-led training. That can be an online webinar or two-day advanced training seminar. Recently, 58 agents attended a two-day seminar in Atlanta.

These classes are on more advanced topics and include some continuing education credit classes. At a minimum, agents have had two years experience. Some even attended the new agents training program the year before, she noted.

The third prong of the company's agent education program involves online training modules. This taps Travelers' partnership with RegEd's CEAuthority. Ms. Fitzgibbon said RegEd is an independent vendor specializing in continuing education.

Through the partnership with RegEd, Travelers gives agents one continuing education credit online class for free.

“Agents are often looking for relevant courses to get those CE hours,” said Ms. Fitzgibbon. “So we are pretty excited to offer one course free to our agents that they can take online.”

Travelers chooses the course offered and is considering changing the offering every so often, she said.

In addition to the free course, agents also have access to the CEAuthority extensive library of CE courses at a reduced price.

Ms. Fitzgibbon said the program, announced at the end of August, received a “phenomenal” response. In the first week more than 500 agents took the free class, she noted.

On the company's website, (http://agents.travelers.com/agentU/home.aspx) Travelers offers its own online training courses, not CE-related, featuring risk control products and insurance basics, all part of the AgentU program.

The company is continuing to add to its program and is seeking to expand its offerings, she continued. Plans call for continuation of the three-week new producer course and the shorter, two-day course for experienced agents.

In choosing topics, Ms. Fitzgibbon said Travelers will use a combination of surveys, focus groups and what it hears from the regional offices to gauge producer interest. Industries chosen for the seminars also reflect regional interests aimed at helping producers grow their business.

“We want to focus on educational areas that will be beneficial to both [agents and Travelers],” she pointed out.

“The big thing, from our perspective, is that we want to make this easy for agents,” explained Ms. Fitzgibbon. “We are interested in their professional development and we are interested in helping them grow. And in putting together AgentU, one of our driving factors was to make it easy for them; that's been our focus and goal.”