Here are six steps for creating a structured renewal and remarketing plan for your agency, which can streamline your process, drastically reduce remarketing and ultimately improve client retention:

1) Know when rates are increasing. Being aware of when your clients’ premium rates are rising is vital to being able to communicate with, provide service to and ultimately retain your clients. This will enable you to reach out to them proactively to resolve their concerns rather than leaving them blindsided by an increase—which could prompt them to start shopping on their own. 

See if you can set up notifications in your agency management system (AMS) when the rate increases on a policy, such as when a carrier download increases the premium over a certain percentage. If that’s not an option, assign staff members to review policies before renewal. This is a chance to identify policies with significant increases and proactively look at options.

2) Understand the impact of remarketing on your agency. Remarketing policies can be time-consuming and costly—and negatively impacts carrier partners as well. To come up with a plan of attack for remarketing, you need to understand how it’s currently affecting your agency. 

• Here are a few questions to ask to quantify the impact remarketing has on your agency:
• How much time do staff members currently spend on remarketing policies? 
• How many policies are being remarketed each month? And how does this compare to the total number of clients that were offered remarketing options? 
• How much premium was decreased due to remarketing? 
• How were commissions impacted by remarketing? 

3) Set clear standards for when to remarket a policy. Once you understand where your agency stands, you can come up with remarketing guidelines, including what to check before remarketing a policy and how much time should be spent on remarketing to keep it cost-effective. 

Ideally, remarketing a policy should be considered as a last resort, rather than the first option to get a client’s rate down. Here are some general rules of thumb to gauge for when to remarket:

• Rates increase over a certain threshold. Decide what percentage increase merits a review of the policy for possible remarketing. This shouldn’t necessarily include increases that are due to the client’s activity, such as accidents, traffic tickets or recent claims.
• There is a significant change in risk profile. If the client has had significant changes to their family, business or activities since the policy was originally bound, their carrier may no longer align well with their needs. If the changes are significant enough, remarketing with a different carrier might make sense. 
• The client refuses all other options. Keep in mind that a policy shouldn’t necessarily be remarketed just because the client asks—they may simply be reacting to a situation they don’t understand. They might not realize that saving a few dollars by changing carriers could come at the cost of sacrificing service, coverage or claims handling. 

Here are guidelines for when it might make sense to remain with the current carrier:

• The quality of the current carrier is worth the increased cost. As your client’s insurance adviser, you’re best positioned to understand whether the value they receive from their current carrier is worth the rate increase. With premiums rising across the board in the current market, you may be unlikely to find the same coverage and service elsewhere for a lower price.
• The potential cost savings with another carrier are minimal. Remarketing a policy requires hours of work by the agency and carrier, as well as effort from the client. If the cost savings from switching are small, it may not be worth remarketing. The customer also likely won’t find it worth the hassle of setting up their policy and learning the ins and outs of a new carrier for nominal savings. 
• The policy has had—or the client has requested—consistent remarketing. If the client is constantly changing carriers to save a few dollars on their rate, they are likely costing the agency more money than they’re worth. Don’t be afraid to let clients get their insurance elsewhere if they are never satisfied with their rate. 

4) Automate renewal communications. Automated communications can be hugely helpful in reaching out to clients at the right time for conversations around renewal or rate increases. It also cuts down on the manual labor of contacting clients individually. 

Agencies can leverage their management system and integrated email solutions for these communications. For example, ValChoice found that agencies were able to reduce their remarketing by 80% by using automated renewal campaigns that share the service ratings and value of their current carrier.

5) Talk to your clients about their policies. An astonishing 65% of the customers who leave an agency never talked to someone at the agency after the policy was written, according to Agency Performance Partners, while an impressive 80% of customers who did talk to an agent during the policy term stayed with the agency. Picking up the phone and having a direct conversation with a client—in addition to email or text communication—may take a little extra time and effort, but it can have a huge impact on your client retention. 

It’s a good idea to put together a checklist or rough script that staff can use to make sure they approach the conversation in the best manner and discuss all the key points. Here are some of the most important items to include in the conversation:

• Explain the rate increase and why it’s happening. If the increase is due to the client’s actions, such as a car accident, ticket, claims, endorsements or the cancellation of one policy in a package, give specifics on what caused the increase and why. It’s helpful for clients to understand how their actions can affect their rate so they can act accordingly in the future. If the increase is simply due to the carrier, educate the client by providing context for the current market and why rates are increasing for everyone.
• Empathize with the client’s frustrations or concerns. Listen to what they have to say without interrupting and summarize their feedback at the end so they know you took note of their concerns. 
• Provide options. Explain discounts that may be possible on their current policy, including multi-line discounts for adding additional policies, telematic devices or safety courses. Explain whether remarketing is a viable option for the policy. If it is, present the remarketing options. If it’s not, explain the value of their current carrier and why staying with the carrier is beneficial. 

6) Use technology to streamline the requoting process. Having a solid plan in for communicating with customers will greatly reduce the number of policies that need to be remarketed. However, in today’s market, some requoting is inevitable. This is where agencies can use technology and tools offered by their AMS and integrated solutions to save time on the tedious remarketing process. 

Having a rater that’s integrated with your AMS eliminates the need to enter data multiple times. Even if your AMS doesn’t include a rater, it may offer bridge integration with outside raters, which allows you to pass client and policy data into the rater with a simple click.

Your AMS, or other InsurTech solutions in the market, may offer tools to streamline data entry for quoting or policy servicing. For example, HawkSoft’s HawkLink extension for Google Chrome lets agents autofill client and policy data into carrier portals and other websites. This can provide huge time savings for quoting with carriers that aren’t available in a rater, such as managing general agents (MGAs) and mutuals. 

During the hard market, this type of technology is especially helpful for carriers that may have withdrawn from raters or whose rates are unreliable. It allows you to get accurate, bindable quotes directly from the carrier’s website without time-consuming data reentry. 

While the current insurance landscape presents obstacles for independent agencies, consumers need expert advisers more than ever to educate and guide them through their policy options. By putting the right processes and technology in place, independent agencies can increase retention, boost the value of the service they provide to their clients, and reduce the time spent remarketing policies.

Rachel Stauffer is content manager at HawkSoft, a leader in management systems for independent insurance agencies that want effective workflows and a delightful experience for staff and policyholders.