As the insurance market softens, the customer relationship becomes vital for customer retention. For Doug Pullen, regional vice president at nCino, better use of data and AI could give brokers the insight they need to become more valuable advisers.

A common risk insurance firms encounter in a soft market they chase premiums and become “less disciplined on the risks they place,” Pullen explained. Most brokers, particularly at large incumbent firms, are reliant on outdated technology with data isolated across multiple systems or a single platform containing incomplete data. “By the time they sit down for a renewal the risk picture in front of them is already wrong,” he added.

A recent report from Getstrada estimated insurance agents waste up to 2.5 hours a day on manual tasks. For a team of 20 agents, that accounts for 12 hours each week lost to manual input rather than supporting the customer relationship. The brokers that can succeed during the competitive soft market will be those reducing those manual workloads and improving client/broker relationships.

Pullen said, “The brokers who do well when the market’s soft aren’t the ones racing to cut price, they’re the ones who know the risk better than the client does. You can’t do that if your data’s a mess.”

Providing brokers with greater intelligence is not simply giving them access to policy history, it means giving them the full client picture. This includes data on how the client’s business has grown, where risk has shifted since renewal and how the client compares to others in the market.

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