Hi, John and Meghan here again from MCA with our last video in the Commercial Line series.
In prior videos, we talked about how ease of doing business is critical in the small commercial space. That’s particularly true with straight-through processing and how it not only impacts agency experience but also underwriter capacity.
Using straight through processing, you can write more new business and manage the same level expenses.
This is done by making sure that underwriter capacity is spent in the right places. You’d want to go about this by looking at your risks. What are large risks that actually need an underwriter view. So think of something of more than ten vehicles. What types of risks should be straight through, with some exceptions?
And then what kind of risks are just so small doesn’t actually warrant having someone look at it. So think of this as like a single vehicle PPT.
You’ll want to make sure that your underwriters are actually spending their time underwriting and not processing. This can be managed by looking at the questions set and is there additional information that underwriter is asking on every single risk that comes in for a certain class. An example of this would be a contractor doing painting. Is your underwriter reaching out every time and asking what is the height?
How many stories? If so, this is something where you could actually just add the question to the UX and if the contractor’s on the ground, let it go straight through.
You can optimize your question set through data. This is something where if you have the right data available, you can actually go in and see how are the questions you’re asking performing and what is the outcome from someone going through your process.
That’s actually where we recommend starting, taking a look at your core data. A lot of times carriers have a lot of code data in house, they’re just not using it. How do you structure that? Usually when we’re with clients, that’s where we start is getting that data set in order. From there you can then use it to really look at the entire sales funnel or assembly line from submission all the way through to issuance.
What happens along the way are quotes not making it all the way to rating. Are they reaching an underwriters desks and then getting declined or are they getting approved by underwriters and then ultimately never getting issued? Understanding every step of the assembly line really helps you focus on where in the process you need to improve.
Whether it’s a question set, your referral rules, that sort of thing. If there’s a bottleneck, that’s how we’ll find it. This is the last ever video in our series, but we’re going to NAMIC CPL and Chicago in March, and we look forward to seeing you there.