Insurance Agencies that have maximized the use of automation simplify the sale of their agency in a number of ways. Additionally, automation helps make the sale of the agency attractive to buyers, and having more buyers at the table helps increase the agency selling price. Let’s look at the advantages agency technology can play in the sale of an agency.
Access to Reports
Prospective buyers are going to want to view accurate reports of the agency. To do so will take both good data as well as an automated system to process reports of this data. Here is an example of some reports that should be included in an Agency Profile Report:
- Book of business report by client
- Book of business report by carrier
- Average policy count per household
- Average premium per policy
- Breakdown by line of business
- Location of accounts
- Number of accounts by premium size
- Number of accounts by revenue size
- Largest clients
A good agency management system will allow you to pull and sort reports as well as download them into an excel spreadsheet to further sort the data if needed. By having this information at your fingertips, you will be able to easily put together your agency profile report. Having good reports in your agency profile report is no different than putting together an insurance proposal when trying to win over insurance accounts, except this is so much more important because it’s the sale of your agency.
Transfer of Agency
When transferring an insurance agency after the sale, a full automated agency can be transferred by either electronically transferring the data or by providing passwords on a web based system. Let’s inspect the elements that will make this even more successful:
1. Have all policy data input into the system under each respective account. If the policy information is not automatically downloaded, see that this information has been updated on the system as of the most recent renewal and endorsements.
2. Have all client contact information, including the phone numbers and email addresses under each client file. Contact information is very important for the buying agency and will allow for a smoother transition since client contact is so important.
3. Make sure all client notes, activities and follow ups (often known as tasks) have been documented in the system. This will not only prevent potential E&O incidents that can affect both the buying and the selling agencies, it will allow the buying agency to immediately follow up on open items with minimal interaction with the seller.
4. Have all documents filed by client and stored on the management system, including emails. With electronic filing, everything is paperless and is under the account, so there are no physical boxes of files to transfer.
If you plan on selling your agency and have these procedures in place, you will have a much easier time selling and transferring the agency. Those who don’t, most especially if it’s in the game plan to sell your agency within the next five years, should start doing this now because having good data does not happen overnight. Furthermore, putting in place procedures to accomplish this is even more important, particularly for the staff following those procedures. Even if you don’t plan on selling your agency, this is very important to running an agency; it will also make a world of a difference in the event of an emergency sale.
