What is the one thing that you wish both carriers and agents understood about each other?
The one thing I wish carriers and agents understood about each other (most do, but tend to forget in my experience) is that each works with multiple carriers and agencies. As an underwriter, I manage and handle 15+ agencies and agencies represent 10+ carriers most of the time. An understanding of this or remembrance of this would cause each party to exercise a little more patience. For example, if an agent forgets a unique coverage specific to Society, I try not to be upset because I realize the agency has lots of carriers all with different unique coverages, making it hard for them to remember. In the same vein, agencies and carriers should understand that the other party does not spend 100% of their day working for them. For example, I work with multiple agencies every day and have multiple things to work on, so I appreciate when agents understand that I try to get to their requests as soon as I can, but sometimes that isn’t always within the first 30 minutes after they sent an email or left me a voicemail.
I wish that there was more common sense stuff and more formal training. I had to learn trial by fire and had to do a lot of bad habits later on.
What is the one thing that you wish both carriers and agents understood about each other?
Underwriters need to know that a piece of NEW business to an agency takes a tremendous amount of effort relationship and trust and knowledge. They seem to think you just roll your business form one carrier to the next as the market gets adjusted by carrier changes. They consider that new business. New business at an agency is new “revenue” new “clients”. There are some great underwriters that do know that and know how to help within the confines of their corporate guidelines. Typically those are the more experienced underwriters.What agents may not see, but is pretty obvious, is that most underwriters hands are tied. The flexibility they had 30 years ago has been limited by tech and AI as the computers know the rules so why do underwriters need to do any analysis. How can an underwriter be better than AI that has been driven by data? Valuable underwriters know what flexibility there is and when to use it.
How do you get yourself through cold calls?
What I do is I try to do some advance scouting to make sure I know who specifically to ask for, and what I want to talk about to get them hooked. I don’t have it in me to just call strangers all day and get rejected, so I want to make sure I have as much info as I can to make it worth their time, and I always throw out that I can come in for a face-to-face pretty early on so they don’t think it’s any kind of scam. Also, if things get too rough I’ll also play Hearthstone or something so that I can at least get SOMETHING accomplished. I’m also sending more emails, because if I’m gonna spin my wheels cold-calling, I may as well get copy/paste in the mix.
About Antonio Canas
Tony started in insurance in 2009 and immediately became a designation addict and shortly thereafter a proud insurance nerd. He has worked in claims, underwriting, finance and sales management, at 4 carriers, 6 cities and 5 states. Tony is passionate about insurance, technology and especially helping the insurance industry figure out how to retain and engage the younger generation of insurance professionals. Tony is a co-founder of InsNerds.com and a passionate speaker.
Tony started in insurance in 2009 and immediately became a designation addict and shortly thereafter a proud insurance nerd. He has worked in claims, underwriting, finance and sales management, at 4 carriers, 6 cities and 5 states. Tony is passionate about insurance, technology and especially helping the insurance industry figure out how to retain and engage the younger generation of insurance professionals. Tony is a co-founder of InsNerds.com and a passionate speaker.
