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The commercial insurance sector is undergoing a paradigm shift. Carriers, MGAs, wholesalers, and brokers are adapting to new market demands. Traditional portals, once seen as innovative, are now showing their age and shortcomings. The gap between what brokers expect and what legacy portals offer is growing, presenting challenges and opportunities for innovation.
The Carrier Advantage: Benefits of Modern Portal Solutions
Modern portal adoption offers immediate benefits to carriers, MGAs, wholesalers, and program managers. These benefits span several areas:
Operational efficiency: Modern portals significantly cut down on manual work and data entry. AI based application intake and processing allows brokers and underwriters more time to focus on complex risk assessments. By automating daily tasks, brokers and underwriters may handle more submissions without adding head count and also improve service levels and response times, key advantages in today’s competitive market.
Data entry elimination. This is a key advantage in automating submissions. Elimination of data entry also eliminates entry errors allowing for reduced back and forth workflows between brokers and underwriters and improves time to proposal significantly.
Data integrity. Another area of improvement is the data integrity of the application. Commercial insurance applications can be time consuming to complete. A common frustration among underwriters is missing information from broker submissions that require multiple rounds of data gathering effort. This unnecessarily prolongs the quote and proposal process. Modern portals enforce quality edits on key data elements that improve data integrity. Incomplete submissions no longer make their way to underwriting, eliminating a major source of inefficiency.
Enhanced data analytics: Today’s portals collect detailed data at every interaction. This provides deep insights into submission patterns, win rates, and broker behavior. Carriers are able to refine their product offerings, adjust pricing strategies, and change their risk appetite leveraging data analytics.
Smart underwriting. Smart validation rules and automated checks greatly reduce errors in submissions. This improvement in data quality leads to more accurate underwriting decisions.
Brand differentiation: In today’s digital-first world, a superior portal experience is a key differentiator. Carriers investing in modern digital capabilities show their commitment to broker partnerships. They position themselves as market leaders. Brokers are constantly on the lookout for technology that makes it easier for them to place business. Modern portals provide the leverage brokers need to increase their deal flow.
Next generation of insurance professionals. Demographics are changing rapidly and the preference to interact digitally is ever increasing. Carriers that provide multiple ways to interact and transact business around the clock are highly attractive to a larger segment of next generation brokers. Modern portals and mobile apps offer an opportunity to streamline traditional workflows and enable key entities within their insurance value chain to work smarter.
Commercial Line Broker Priorities
Brokers have clear priorities that differ from traditional portal offerings. A recent Nationwide Agency Forward survey found that speed, self-service and collaboration are top priorities and digital solutions are fundamental in helping brokers address these priorities effectively.
Speed and simplicity: Brokers want quick quote turnaround times and easy interfaces. The Nationwide study shows that agents are expected to communicate more frequently with prospects and policyholders and to be proactive.
Self-service was identified as a top priority in the Nationwide survey. Carriers that offer quick raters and comparative price indicators save considerable time by providing their brokers with highly efficient, valuable tools. Modern portals provide configurable straight through processing capability based on a carrier’s underwriting appetite. Modern portals also allow certificates of insurance to be generated on demand. Self-service workflows are a key ask by brokers.
Mobile accessibility: The post-pandemic insurance workforce needs to work from anywhere and outside traditional office hours. Brokers want modern portal functionality on all their devices..
Native mobile capabilities provide simplicity and ease of use from a user’s android or iOS smartphone. Native mobile apps provide complete, user-friendly functionality that is not limited by screen size of a cumbersome “web optimized” application design. Visit our blog post titled “Insurance mobile app vs responsive web application” for more information.
Mobile apps provide instant information and communication at a broker’s fingertips making them significantly more responsive to their client needs since they no longer need to wait to get back to their office or to a desktop.
Real-time communication: The old “submit and wait” model is no longer acceptable. Nationwide’s research reflects a shift toward streamlined; responsive technology enabled services. Efficient digital communication tools are essential.
The days of read-only portals or those that only provide periodic status updates and static information without the ability to interact are done. Modern portals have built in collaboration capabilities which greatly streamline communication efforts. Encrypted text collaboration can be initiated on-the-spot to a dedicated team whenever questions arise. Users no longer resort to hunting down contacts and phone numbers. Live video calls may also be initiated as needed.
The Problem with Traditional Portals
Traditional insurance portals have fundamental limitations that make them outdated:
Rigid architecture: Legacy portals can’t integrate with modern systems or third-party data sources. This forces brokers to maintain multiple workflows and perform redundant data entry, leading to inefficiency and frustration.
Poor user experience: Outdated interfaces and complicated navigation create friction in the submission process. As brokers’ digital expectations have risen, shaped by modern technology, these limitations have become unacceptable.
Limited functionality: Traditional portals offer basic quote and bind functions but lack modern features like advanced application processing for a seamless rate, quote and bind capability, real-time collaboration tools, and advanced analytics. This gap forces users to rely on multiple systems and manual processes for simple workflows.
Maintenance burden: Legacy systems require significant IT resources for maintenance and ongoing operation leading to increased costs. This makes it hard to quickly respond to market changes or broker needs. Over time, this legacy technology burden makes maintenance challenging and very expensive. Carriers often find that 3 out of 4 IT dollars are being spent on maintenance and keeping systems afloat instead of being directed to providing new capabilities.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Insurance Portals
The insurance industry is at a critical juncture. Digital transformation is rapidly changing the commercial insurance sector. Carriers, MGAs, wholesalers and program managers must understand older portals can no longer fulfill today’s needs. They must act to address the needs of their externa stakeholders. Success in this area will assure market success.
The next generation of insurance portals will feature:
- Seamless integration of workflows across systems and stakeholder roles
- Intelligent automation to cut down manual tasks
- Real-time collaboration tools to enhance partnerships and communication
- Mobile-first design for support work from anywhere, anytime
- Advanced analytics for smarter business decisions
Companies embracing change stand to gain market share and improve broker relationships. Those sticking to outdated portals risk becoming less relevant.
The demise of traditional portals is not just likely, it’s necessary for the industry’s progress. The future is for those who can offer the digital experience that commercial insurance agents desire and require.
Brian Bogel