New Celent Report Commissioned by Majesco Highlights the Digital Chess Game of the Independent Agent

With the fight for distributor shelf space, insurers priorities and investment in digital and distribution capabilities are crucial for growth and success

Majesco, a global leader of cloud insurance software solutions for insurance business transformation, today announced the availability of a new Celent research report commissioned by Majesco, Reshaping the Distributor Insurer Relationship: A Survey of Independent Insurance Agents.

The report, commissioned by Majesco and executed independently by Celent, is based on survey data of 231 independent agents to better understand how they prefer to interact with insurers across a broad set of activities and their current satisfaction with their digital interactions at a transaction level, as well as the activities needed to run the agency. It assessed the level of digital interaction they would like to see over the next three years across a broad array of areas important to them. In addition, the report looks at the generational impact to see if the agent of tomorrow had different views than the agent of today (or yesterday).

Shifting customer expectations are creating a new need for new business models. As the current workforce ages, insurers are exploring new distribution strategies that can fill this hole, capitalize on trends, and implement the necessary cutting-edge business operations that can strengthen distributor and channel relationships. With the emergence of technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, insurers can quickly match customers and agents, provide recommendations on best next steps, and align compensation and services where they will have the greatest impact. Much like the rest of the industry, independent agents are going through their own digital transformation and demanding new capabilities. Understanding agent’s perspectives on how they want to digitally engage with insurers is critical to succeeding both today and in the future.

“Insurers are increasingly focused on digitally enabling the independent agency channel, while exploring new distribution channels,” stated Denise Garth, Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco. “This report underlines both the operational and strategic importance of insurer’s accelerating their distribution management maturity through digital transformation from the front-end experience through the back-end distribution management capabilities. Agents have high expectations today, but even higher for tomorrow. Simply building a portal will not meet their expectations. Instead, investments in new digital experiences with a 360 view of agent’s engagement to robust distribution management that enables innovative compensation, digital onboarding, online reporting and more will improve the agent’s ability and desire to place business with an insurer to drive growth.”

Surprisingly 30% of Generation Z respondents prefer to do everything via phone, email, or in person rather than using technology (such as portals). This raises the question of what generation is more likely to prefer to use technology. Is it that younger generations are more familiar with technology but less familiar with insurance and want additional guidance and advice from experts? In addition, the report underscored the difference between how life agents and property casualty agents interact with insurers. Property casualty agents are more likely than life agents to interact digitally or mostly digitally when quoting personal and small commercial lines for new business.

“The fight for shelf space is heating up,” stated Karlyn Carnahan, Head of Property and Casualty, North America for Celent. “These increasing mergers and acquisitions are placing greater pressure on the process of onboarding agents, managing licenses, handling commissions, managing increasingly complex hierarchies, and providing more support in reporting capabilities. Insurers looking for help prioritizing their investments in digital and distribution management capabilities for agents also have to think through where to use humans to deliver differentiated services.”

Technology remains a major play in the digital chess game but investing in the right solutions for agents is key to winning. To drive growth and deliver on agent needs, carriers must leverage a combination of automated support for day-to-day transactions and provide additional tools and services to help the agent manage business operations. The game of chess is played by thinking one to two steps ahead of your opponent. Insurers must do the same by leveraging data and analytics to better meet the needs of today’s digitally committed agents.

Learn more by downloading Reshaping the Distributor Insurer Relationship: A Survey of Independent Insurance Agents from the Majesco website or by emailing info@majesco.com.

About Majesco

Majesco is the leading software partner to both the P&C and L&A insurance markets to modernize, optimize and innovate their businesses at speed and scale. Over 330 insurers, from greenfields, start-ups and MGAs to the largest insurers, reinsurers and brokers use Majesco’s next generation SaaS platform solutions of core, data and analytics, digital, distribution, absence management and a rich ecosystem marketplace of established and InsurTech partners to build the future of insurance.

Our technology, expertise and leadership help insurers innovate and connect to build the future of their business. With over 825 successful implementations and over 65% of our customers on Cloud with Majesco platform solutions, together we have an amazing track record of innovation and real-world results. For more details on Majesco, please visit www.majesco.com.

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