Digital evolution made simple.
We want to help you move the needle on your most important projects, the ones that will shape your company for the next decade. Working with your tech team and implementing ready built solutions, we can help you upgrade your systems and create industry leading solutions.
What is a Strategy?
There are a lot of ways to upgrade your operations and many tasks associated with making any change. A strategy is the way we approach making one of these changes. By braking a strategy into major and minor tasks, we can work with you and your team to divvy out work, select solutions, and implement the strategies that matter to you.
The API Strategy
This strategy holds that API’s are key to the survival of a carrier because they are required by internal developers, external partners such as agents, distribution channels such as agency management systems, online marketplaces, and automation bots such as artificial intelligence.
- Carriers that plan to be relevant in small commercial insurance
are pursuing this strategy in order to connect to agency
management systems, digital marketplaces, and MGA’s to access small commercial flow. - Carriers anticipating API automation creeping up market into middle-market business are pursuing this strategy to make as many lines available via API as possible to maintain a competitive advantage in larger accounts.
For success, the company must be equipped with sufficiently mature API’s to connect to and work with any internal or external party.
Example: Cincinnati, Acuity
The Low-Touch Small Commercial Strategy
This strategy says that because agents don’t make much money on small commercial business, they will send their business to whoever makes it as touch-free and inexpensive as possible.
- Carriers that want to increase combined ratio by lowering expense ratio are pursuing this strategy to create more margin.
- Carriers that want to grow with large agencies are pursuing this
strategy to increase ease of doing business.
For success, the company must remove every possible processing task for the agent and maximize stickiness to create an annuity line of business.
Example: Chubb, Amtrust
The Vertical Program Strategy
This strategy asserts that the most profitable business comes from targeted growth which is obtained through specialization.
- Carriers that want to grow in specific industries use this strategy to target them.
- Carriers that want the most sophisticated underwriting use this strategy to understand a target market and tailor their underwriting questions, loss control and claims processes to it.
- Ideal for carriers with, or aspiring to have, dominant niches and differentiated products, unique distribution strategies, and customized services. For success, the company must make tailored products available to agents and provide flexible, specialized data intake mechanisms for custom data sets.
Example: WR Berkley, Amtrust
The Ecosystem Platform Strategy
This strategy emphasizes helping agents, policyholders, and carrier employees as the way to profitability growth, and create stickiness. This strategy depends on the ability to deliver value-adds, share data, understand accounts, and create transparency at all levels of the supply chains.
- Carriers that want to improve customers’ businesses and their risk pursue this strategy in order to create and value-added tools.
- Carriers that want to dominate a vertical in mindshare and growth pursue this strategy to create deep focus and understanding of a market and extremely tailored products enabled by a connected ecosystem.
For success, the company must become a destination for the target market, offering value-added tools and services as part of the insurance-buying process. A complementary agency force that believes in the mission is synergistic to this strategy.
Example: Nationwide, Jeweler’s Mutual
The Consolidation and Aggregation Strategy
This strategy uses agency relationships to obtain consolidated business via book rolls and organic remarketing opportunities. Often deployed in conjunction with large groups of agencies and large blocks of premium.
For success, the company must provide easy ways of bringing in agency books and automatically quoting them, and then ideally moving the business as well.
- Carriers that want more share of existing agency business use this strategy.
- Carriers that want to go after a book of another carrier’s business choose this strategy.
Success for this strategy means that the company has a process in place for submitting and quoting incumbent carrier policies as the automatic renewal process itself, and usually requires an API.
Example: Hanover
The Carrier Portal Strategy
This strategy believes that a carrier portal as a destination for agents will lead to growth.
- Carriers that create a better customer experience for their agents than anyone else pursue this strategy to capitalize on this expertise.
Success means almost an almost-captive agent experience where agents have a very carrier-centric workflow.
Example: Hartford, Travelers
The Multi-Channel Sales Strategy
This strategy prioritizes sale simplicity and automation to enable sales through multiple distribution channels including eCommerce, Progressive-style product placement, and niche-based partnerships.
- This strategy is used by carriers that have products that pair well with eCommerce applications, usually with relatively simple underwriting requirements.
- This strategy is used by carriers who want to compete with Progressive for real estate on agency web sites.
For success, the company must provide a customizable quoting experience that can be prefilled and linked into by a variety of channels.
Example: Progressive, Jeweler’s Mutual, Lemonade
The Independent MGA Strategy
This strategy holds that the fastest way to bring new products to market is by using a separate entity that handles the customer and agency interaction, and then uses the carrier as capital in the background, along with other carriers to fill out the product offering.
- This strategy is used by carriers that want to go as fast as possible
- This strategy is used by carriers that want to offer a strong coverage as a standalone product
For success, the company must provide a soup-to-nuts new experience and lifecycle support.
Example: Arrowhead/QBE