March 13, 2024
Bruce Mackay—President, Mackay Insurance
Sarah Van Allen—Co-owner, Van Allen Insurance
Scott Maskell—President, Erion Insurance
To say we’re in an era of accelerating change is somehow both cliché and not stating things strongly enough. Wild technological advancements are making headlines daily. Like it or not, changes are coming for every industry, including ours. These three brokerage leaders are embracing the power of artificial intelligence and automation and share their insight.
How did your brokerage initially decide to explore and adopt AI/automation technologies?
BM: We started partnering with Quandri, who is an independent forward-thinking brokerage to start a bot that did renewal quoting for us.
SVA: We were exploring automation with our renewal delivery process just before 2020. We took advantage of automation in order to get our policyholders their renewals and policy changes as we integrated Pathway with our BMS system. We wanted to ease what we could for our clients—they could get their policy documents by email in a timely manner and it opened a communication channel for them to respond to that email if there were questions.
SM: Our team often discusses how our operation can be improved. At IBAO’s 2022 Convention, I had the pleasure of spending time with a few vendors I consider to be innovative and well-informed about technology. I was surprised by the reasonable cost and ease of implementing automation technology for some of the raw, time consuming, administrative tasks in our brokerage. Clementine had developed bots that worked well in managing tasks that our staff often indicated were on the top of our operational pain point list.
Are there specific areas or processes where you’ve implemented automation?
BM: During the process a need came up in the renewal review TSR role, so we changed course and designed a bot that processed, compared and activated renewals. Delays in processing went from 2-4 weeks down to 1 day overnight. Our lost policies dropped by 50% thanks in part to us being able to contact those accounts quicker rather than them going shopping elsewhere.
SVA: We’ve implemented AI with some of our marketing strategies, however this is the furthest we’ve explored AI at this time. The relationships with our insureds are built on trust, and we want our insureds to always know there is a human on the other side of the communication channel. Automation has allowed us to be sure our insureds receive their policy documents in a timely manner. As insurers implement paperless strategies, we’re ready for the change—our clients receive a copy of their policy documents directly from our office, with our brokerage branding.
SM: We’ve implemented Automation Technology primarily for Electronic Data Integration, Automated Invoicing and the Amending of eDocs in order to better interact with our operations, so our team can easily locate information through the customer file. We previously spent about two hours a day working on those tasks. We’ve saved that time and have been able to improve our operations by promoting team members into roles that better serve our customers and our business.
Have there been notable transformations or evolutions in specific job roles within your brokerage because of automation?
BM: Previously we had the Renewal Review TSR role as an entry level position. We’ve redistributed our staff so that they’re now in more customer facing roles.
SVA: One of our senior staff is responsible for maintaining automated workflows in Pathway and our broker support team reviews the documents sent through Pathway to ensure our clients have received the correct documents. Significant human hours are still required to be spent ensuring these automated workflows roll out seamlessly.
SM: Certainly! We’re relatively new to adopting Automation Technology, however we’ve been making monthly changes to the job roles of certain members of our team. We’re making better use of time by developing operational procedures that can, in the near future, evolve into processes managed by automation. We’re reviewing operations with an eye on automating and learning more about what new developments can offer our brokerage.
What are your brokerage’s plans for further integration? Are there specific areas you’re prioritizing for improvement?
BM: What was good two years ago isn’t enough in 2024. Some BMS systems are starting to catch up and we’re constantly looking for ways to improve, build more automated systems and use automation to help us prioritize and invest in the accounts we need to.
SVA: We’re continually adding workflows in Pathway, including upsell opportunities to insureds as well as details on new product offerings. We’ll continue leveraging AI with our marketing strategies, however in an industry where customer service is our top priority, we’re taking a wait and see approach on further implementation.
SM: We’re working with our vendor to implement bots and automation that can help us ask questions of client data in our systems and help us better segment and analyze it so we can better advise our customers on options and coverage. We’re also reviewing our bookkeeping and accounting functions to better manage our reconciliations and save time and resources.