Grange Insurance has been in full development of its agency automation program for almost two decades, according to Sherri Rarey, assistant vice president, agency interface for the carrier.
"We encourage agents back then to purchase a management system and we dedicated ourselves to providing the functionality that would make that investment worthwhile for them," she says. "That was building the foundation. Today we support over 41 different agency management systems, all the comparative raters our agents use, and we provide real-time transaction servicing. We've kept our promise as far as continuing to develop the tech that makes it easy for agents to work with us."
If a carrier is not priced competitively, ease of doing business is not going to make a difference, explains Michael Fergang, CIO for Grange Insurance.
"[The agents'] interest is the policyholder," he says. "The policyholder wants to be assured they have the right coverage at the right price. You can't be out of line in the market—the market won't support it."
Those carriers that price their policies competitively find that ease of doing business is a differentiator, according to Fergang.
"It's in the way claims are handled, the way you respond to calls as well as the technology," he says.
Grange accommodates its agents by directing them to the carrier's portal where the agent has the capability to get a status of all their claims or any other communication between the carrier and the policyholder.
"Every status an agent wants to know they can get in real time," says Fergang. "We have subscriptions for up to 26 alerts that anyone in the [agent's] office can choose. You can choose one or all 26. On a real-time basis you are alerted on things that are transactional—a claim, a pending cancellation, anything—you can get that real time."
Whoever subscribes to the alerts receives an email with an imbedded link, which allows the subscriber to get into Grange's portal to get more information.
"They can get as much detail as they want," says Fergang.
Working with Agents
Any ideas Grange comes up with are run by a group of agents.
"We believe strongly that without their input our great idea may not be successful," says Rarey. "Our efforts are validated. The functionality we provide is not forced upon the agents, but we've made it so easy that they voluntarily use it. Agents submit about 98 percent of all our new business and policy changes. They don't have to, but we've made it easy for them to do so."
Fergang points out that virtually all ideas are vetted by Grange and if it is something that has some appeal for both sides the carrier pilots a program before rolling it out.
"We have sessions with CSRs and our own people and banter about the best way to design this so that agencies will use it," he says. "We exhaust all different input levels."
Fergang also believes Grange is attuned to what its competitors in this space are doing.
"If you are price competitive and your moniker is ease-of-doing-business you hopefully have built something that the agents are excited about and will take advantage of," he says. "We have a high percentage of adoption. Some agencies are sophisticated and others would rather pick up a phone or fax something. Those that are not adopting technology or new ways of doing business are the ones being gobbled up by their peers."
Social Media and Mobile
Over the years, Grange has built and hosts almost 650 agent Websites at no cost to the agents, explains Fergang. Each site is customized for the individual agency.
Grange also has built a Digital Media guide that offers agencies the dos and don'ts on how to be successful with social media sites.
"It's not unusual for agencies to call us for guidance," says Fergang. "Even though we have a guide for them we will always take their calls."
Grange also is a big supporter of ACT, which puts on a lot of free Webinars about social media.
"We promote that to our agents so they know there is free information out there," says Rarey.
Grange has been working on mobile technology since 2009 and formed a group to do research and development.
"We feel strongly about our relationships with our agents," says Rarey. "We wanted to see what we could do for our agents. Everyone else seems to want to focus on the consumer. We took a different approach and piloted a mobile view of our agency portal. We're not looking at apps; it's much easier for us to give them a mobile view of our Web site."
Grange has put together a strategy for the next two years and the company expects to roll out something for its agents no later than the third quarter of this year.
"This was actually our call," says Rarey. "In IT we understand the business, but we're always thinking about the agent."
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