Ready to Close That Deal? Advisen May Be The Solution
Whatever happened to the good old days of loyalty coupled with an insurance broker who provides better value than their competitors? In these tough times as all sectors of the economy struggle to tread water, many of us are probably wondering why accounts that we have had for ten or twenty years sometimes head for the door. There is one answer: The bottom line. This article was written by Adam Raffa, a Producer at DeWitt Stern.
Do not give up quite yet! There is a software tool that DeWitt Stern has invested in which can:
- Increase the ratio of your sales
- Provide your client or prospect with valuable information about their industry and insurance policy
- Clearly put the term "value" back into the minds of the consumers: Advisen!
Advisen is fueling global business insurance with the industry's first ever online knowledge marketplace. Advisen's wealth of information resources, combined with a sophisticated search engine, data mining, and analytical tools provide strategic information services to the insurance industry. By aggregating information relevant to the business insurance industry, Advisen has created a workspace where insurance underwriters, brokers and business managers assess, quantify and evaluate risk within and across domains, benchmark performance against best practices, and track regulatory developments.
Recently, a colleague asked me if I could check what the selfcretention average for a company who specializes in real estate management with revenue over $100 million dollars would be. After filling out the brief search engine questionnaire on the software, I was able to create a graph which illuminated the average retention of similar companies across the country. Based on this information, we were able to determine that the retention was right where it needed to be.
For illustration, Advisen has inserted a histogram of GL retentions associated with 29 insurance programs that belong to Real Estate Management & Development companies with $100 million - $500 million in revenue. Almost two-thirds of the programs in our sample dataset maintain $0 retentions (guaranteed cost).
We didn't stop there. I used Advisen to do a policy form comparison between the incumbent broker's policy form and the carrier's form that we were planning to use. We were able to show the prospect where the norm in terms of retention fell for their industry, the difference in wording between policies, and also how that could affect the payout of a claim in the event of a loss. To say the least, the prospect was very impressed.
Adam Raffa is a Broker with Business Development Responsibilities at DeWitt Stern, a privately held insurance brokerage and risk advisory. DeWitt Stern specializes in commercial, personal, fine art, employee benefits, FinPro, entertainment, and professional liability services for individuals and mid market clients. Contact Adam Raffa in New York at 212.297.1404 or [email protected].
This article is reprinted with permission from an internal DeWitt Stern newsletter.
DeWitt Stern has been an Advisen client since January 2008. Not surprisingly, the use of Benchmarking for Premiums, Limits, and Retentions is DeWitt Stern's most heavily-used Advisen.com application.
Questions about Advisen?
Use the arsenal of data and analytics on Advisen.com for your advantage. We are happy to walk you through this functionality anytime. Contact your Advisen Rep at 212.897.4800 or [email protected].
