Transcription:
Kelley Kage: (
So, yes, rethinking the agent and broker experience. We thought this was an important topic because as we look across the industry, it is a key piece of our distribution channels. And so you might be asking, you've got Liberty and travelers on the stage at the same time. Normally people think we're competitors, but I met Heather through the women in insurance conference and we've kept that relationship going ever since. And what we're talking about today, as we come together, it's really, these are table stakes that we're discussing right here. These aren't differentiators and things that are going to influence one of us or the other. If we're not bringing these things to the table, we're not gonna be successful. So I'm Kelly Kage. I am CIO for Surety at Liberty Mutual. My background is I've been in the insurance industry in the tech space for 15 years. I have experience with P and C distribution channels as well as some of the corporate aspects and commercial aspects. And now I'm currently in the Surety bond space. I'm focused on global experience where we have customers in 18 countries and having to handle the different cultures and the distribution channels across those different countries. And then I was a 2019 insurance leadership next award winner with Heather.
Heather Cavallaro: (
Good morning, everybody. I'm Heather Cavallaro. I've been with the Travelers in the insurance industry for 20 years in technology. Most recent experiences that have been focused on agent and customer experiences across the commercial onboarding acquisition and servicing experiences and excited to share some of those insights with you today. I'm happy to be reconnected with Kelly through another digital insurance event and excited to be helping close out today's 2022 Dig In session with our final, our final session.
Kelley Kage: (
So let's go ahead and jump right in. So when we think about rethinking the agent experience, there's a lot of industry disruption. We've heard about it the last several days, but what does that really mean for how we're interacting, how we're selling that insurance? And we wanna talk about what we thought was going to happen with the pandemic, and then what's actually happened because those are two very different things. And when we think about some of the forecasts that we're now seeing, it really is about personalization, customization. How do we make those relationships stronger? Not only for our customers but for our agent and broker experience. So let's start three years ago with the pandemic. When everybody was locked in their houses, we thought, okay, this is it. We're moving away from agents and brokers. We are really going to focus on the online experience.
Kelley Kage: (
And what we found is yes, we did see a spike at the beginning in those non face to face avenues, but we proved that's not true, that the agents and brokers are critical to our profit to our experience and what the customers need. Insurance is really complex and they need somebody that they can trust when they're going to buy that policy and make sure that they're buying the right coverage. They need somebody that they can trust to answer their questions. What we've also started to see across every aspect of the industry for us in technology. We definitely see it, but everywhere agents and brokers are experiencing that war on talent too. So whether those are agents and brokers that work for carriers or their independent agents, this is something we really have to think about in making that experience as seamless and as easy as possible for those agents and brokers.
Kelley Kage: (
So they want to do a business with us. We've also heard a continuing thread throughout the entire conference about automation and artificial intelligence. So you're gonna hear that thread continue here too, because that is something we have to constantly look at and to become better at leveraging all of the data that's available about our customers and our agents and brokers. We have to really think about what we can do to predict what agents need and what our customers need. And then we've had that shift in expectations. Customers expect things real time. They don't wanna wait. They don't wanna have to scan paperwork online. They don't wanna have to play email tag and phone tag back and forth. So how do we help those agents and brokers be more proactive with their customers reaching out when they know they have something new that they've acquired that needs coverage or something's changed in their life.
Kelley Kage: (
So how do we help integrate that insurance experience into the day to day lives of our agents and our customers? So you'll see some diagrams on the slides here. And the first one that you see is really about how that agent model has shifted. And we normally pre pandemic thought about that agent model as really being, we interact as carriers with our agents, those agents interact with the customers in that distribution channel and that they were the intermediaries. So we really focused on, are we giving the agents what they need to be successful, that's shifted. And what we're seeing now is more agents going to more of a social model and a risk pooling model as I'll call it where they're looking for like customers to be able to get better discounts on insurance, to be able to better serve those customers and really find that niche where they can have the right level of support and provide that value because they know those customers better than anyone else.
Kelley Kage: (
They're still that point of contact with the insurance carriers, but it's a very different type of interaction than it's been in the past. And as we think about some of the changes for our agents and brokers, it's that paradigm shift that we're seeing. So on the left hand side, you see the circles here. This is really talking about what AI is going to do for our agent and broker experience, what the sales agents need to be successful and through the claims process as well, we're looking at every aspect of the interactions that those customers and agents are having with the carriers right now.
Kelley Kage: (
So how does technology play a role in making us successful here? It's not just the systems, but it has to be a critical partnership between ship between the technology teams and the experts in the agent and broker space and supporting the field there. The relationships are number one, you can't automate the relationships. You can't build that into a system. You really have to think about how you can supplement that relationship, how you can add value to the agents to make their lives easier, help them get business done faster and help them manage that relationship with their customers. You also wanna help the agents become the experts in their field. You want the customers to come to them because they have the answers. If anybody's bought a car recently, you might think about even over the last 10 years, how that relationship has changed. When you walk into a car dealership, those car dealers don't have the upper hand anymore.
Kelley Kage: (
There's so much information out there about the price of the cars, what people are getting for trade-in values. If you are a savvy customer, you can come prepared and really negotiate well. Well, we don't want the agents to fall into that same category. We want to still arm the agents with the details in the complex scenarios that are out there for our customers, help them think about coverage. They may not be aware of whether it's umbrella coverage. I will be the first to say surety bonds or something that most people don't even know what they are. I didn't as of a year ago. So making sure that construction companies understand the benefits that they get from those types of policies. And then we also have to pay attention to the customer's needs because what they needed three years ago, isn't what they need today. So how do we make sure that we're looking at the industry as a whole and monitoring where we think customers are going to need that coverage?
Kelley Kage: (
Just like apple thinking about the iPod and the iPhone customers. Weren't saying we need that but they were thinking ahead about what people would want. And that's where we have to help those agents get ahead and have those conversations with customers. And overall it's about making life easier. We want to automate, we want to provide the information to the agents and brokers so they can get their job done faster, provide that value and service more customers, but that the customer's lives are being made easier in that process as well. So you really have to balance that agent experience and that customer experience. And then think about that long term growth potential right now, when people buy a policy, it's a once a year time that they're thinking about that. And it's normally because they're getting an email about a renewal for their policy, the agent isn't proactively thinking, okay, it's been a year.
Kelley Kage: (
What are the life changes that are out there that I need to proactively reach out and make sure they've got the right coverage for? So how do we approach things a little bit differently to help the agents with that long term growth and profitability for themselves, but also thinking about that full customer journey and customer experience so that they can bring that customer along with them and that profit center for them as the agent can continue to grow as well. So I know I just talked quite a bit, but Heather, I wanna turn it over to you to talk a little bit about what you're seeing for the experience.
Heather Cavallaro: (
Yeah, absolutely. As Kelly discussed technology is really changing expectations for our agents and customers and how they expect personalized experiences and seamless and seamless approaches to being able to do business with their carriers. And as we were trying to wrestle with how technology is gonna disrupt our industry and what opportunities exist, we really thought it was important to take a holistic approach across that experience journey of the commercial buying acquisition, onboarding and servicing journey. So what we did is we spent a lot of time with our agents, a lot of time in focus groups, a lot of time listening and learning, not just from travelers agents, but agents across a broad set of carriers in listens for themes in pain points qualitative research and data from that CX perspective.
Heather Cavallaro: (
And then we looked internally and looked at our own data around what does it look and feel like to do business with us? What are our complex processes internal that are driving poorer or awesome experiences for agents and customers. And we also thought about the outcomes that we were trying to get from a bottom line impact, what profitable growth retention, retention objectives, experience and effectiveness objectives create capacity to do other things within our organization and expense ratio. So we had all these internal bottom line impact objectives, a lot of internal internal studies, and then all this external agent data. And when we married it together, it really manifested itself in a series of opportunities across the experience journey that we're sharing with you here today.
Heather Cavallaro: (
So if you take a look at prospecting and kind of that customer acquisition in sales phase, I'll highlight the ability to have a single view of a customer and Kelly kind of alluded to having information at your fingertips about that business, um, their location information, risk profiles, who, what business are they sitting next to that can cause, that can cause property damage to their physical location, all that type of deep insights and have that at a single place in to support our underwriting and risk profile processes, but not only for us internally, but also sharing that back with the agents and really infusing these insights into how they can do business and better support their clients.
Heather Cavallaro: (
Intake is a fascinating place to think about, how we acquire business from our agents. And it's really a multi-channel approach. Many times during our own proprietary systems trying to look for ways to submit business, to many lines of insurance that we have other times, it's within their own ecosystem, within their own broker agent platform, how can they easily connect to a carrier? But email is still a favorite channel. It's still a very favorite channel for submitting business to especially EST as a carrier. I'm not sure if you're seeing something similar around the ease of email, and this is both for like new business and endorsement processing. And so one of the challenges with email is how do you automate it?
Heather Cavallaro: (
How do you take all this unstructured data and try to streamline some operational processes so we can get to that underwriting and that quote priced and proposal process faster and really improve that total turnaround time to get back to our agents so they can ultimately service their clients better. So, this is where again, automation artificial intelligence and natural language processing really come into play around how to speed that, how to speed that process up. And in a place that's a focus for us as well as probably other carriers. And then data, I really think advanced analytics is gonna play a really large role and how we continue to support agents and get better insights into our underwriting process. When we evaluated our internal processes around underwriting, a lot of time was spent on where's the missing information that I need.
Heather Cavallaro: (
Where's that data that I need to actually feel good about underwriting this risk. So one of the things that we're also focused on is providing all that information to our underwriting and agents. So that way everybody's on the same page in terms of the risk profile for that customer and there's transparency, but also so that we can get to the underwriting process faster, and get that information and that total account proposal back to the agents and then along the lines of customer service, everybody really wants that more personalized, tailored approach. They want you to know who they are, again, back to that single master view of the business do you know who they are? Do they know, do you know their industry well and can you anticipate some of their needs around in endorsement processing and really streamline how we do endorsement processing?
Heather Cavallaro: (
So again sharing some of our insights and opportunities that we found through our external research, as well as when we looked internally at some of our opportunities and just wanted to highlight one of the fun things that we're working on, if you wanna go to next. So I talked a little bit about the ability to connect directly in with the way that agent wants to do business with us, meet them where they are. And one of the things that most carriers are investing on investing in is an API strategy to really be able to digitally connect with broker and agent platforms very easily. And so this, this allows for key business capabilities to be top of mind, you can see them right in a developer portal and know that, oh, wow, I can easily connect with travelers, a Liberty mutual for submission quote indications.
Heather Cavallaro: (
Assuming you're already an insured for the carrier, I can get proof of coverage. So, this is a really easy way for organizations to provide insight into key capabilities that we offer really with no development time, really with no large investment, because they're readily available to the other organizations. And it really leads to good conversations between technology organizations around the requirements are right there. You could actually perform testing right from these sites. So you see here the travelers public's developer portal, as well as Liberty mutual, and it's not unique to us. I think Chubb has a great one as well. But you know really something of investment when you're really thinking about meaning an agent where they wanna do business and not forcing them to leave their own ecosystem of their broker and agent platform. So again, an investment and an API and digital strategy has been pretty important as a foundation.
Kelley Kage: (
Definitely. And I'm just actually gonna go back to your previous slide for a minute, because what was so interesting is when Heather pulled this information together from a Traveler's perspective, I felt like I was looking at Liberty documentation. We both said, these are the exact same things that we're tackling as well. And you really have to look at each of these separately. And even before you get to the technology side of things, really thinking through the business process around that and what are we doing to streamline that process and make it easier before we add the technology into that. And some of these things aren't differentiators, they are table stakes for doing business,
Heather Cavallaro: (
And now expectations that agents have just from their experiences on whether it's Amazon or Google or other platforms that they transact, they're expecting that same personalized approach expecting us to have data about them and about the businesses and be able to share those insights and really advance how we do business with our agents.
Kelley Kage: (
That's very true. And it all comes down to what you mentioned, which is the data. Yeah, data is the new oil. It is what is going to make or break the success that carriers have with agents and brokers. And every step of this process, it's taking that data and figuring out what we can learn from it. What are the insights we can provide back to the agents and brokers to improve that experience and help them learn about their customers from a prospect perspective, there is information that insurers have on different customers who might be a customer for one line of business, but not in another. So how do we help agents cross sell there? And we can start to look at similar types of business and say, customers with this type of background, or this type of industry experience are normally looking for these types of things. So have you marketed that information to those customers? And every step of the way, it really is looking at that data and saying, what can we learn from it? And then figuring out how we actually build the systems around that.
Heather Cavallaro: (
You know, one of the things when we actually went deep on our servicing journey with our customers and agents. And one of the things that we found is especially in the small commercial space, they're not really thinking about the insurance or coverage as they're trying to manage their business. So when they decide to expand to a new location or distribute a new product the impact of insurance is in coverage in their coverage needs are actually really far from mind. So how do we shift the process, left a little bit to help them understand how insurance can help support their business in the best way as they're trying to, as they're trying to expand. And that's where that data and information with the agent and that relationship with the agent becomes really critical and almost a game changer for the customer and agent,
Kelley Kage: (
Definitely. And on the slide where you talked about those API connections, these are critical in helping us to figure out how we meet every different type of agent, because we have small independent agents, we have huge third party brokers that we interact with. So having that partnership with an it team that can really help, like these integrations here are huge for the big players like marsh and Aon, and some of those that wanna use their own system, but we wanna make sure we are still competitive and getting our quotes out there and being considered amongst all of the players in the field. So we're having to think about how do we make it as easy as possible to integrate with those systems so that we aren't having to build separate connectors for every customer, every agent or broker that we're working with. Yeah,
Heather Cavallaro: (
Absolutely.
Kelley Kage: (
So there's really five things that I think about in keeping in mind for our agent and broker strategy. We've already hit on one of them, which is the data piece that continues to be at the forefront and making sure that we're taking that information, providing it proactively and really thinking about not only what data do we have today, but what else is out there? We have so much information, whether it's social media, whether it is industry reports, there's new information coming out on a daily basis. So how do we start to aggregate that, ingest it and really figure out how we use that. And then it's those artificial intelligence, the machine learning models that is where we can add the value for those complex scenarios. How do we automate the easy stuff and really make it streamlined for agent brokers and customer experience there, but then how do we use that artificial intelligence to make the complex stuff easier to understand, and really make that where the agents can have the major impact and bring their knowledge about the industry, to the customers?
Heather Cavallaro: (
Great example of a place where artificial intelligence is helpful, is even just understanding prior loss information prior loss data ISTE is extensive, especially for some of our larger market customers. And when you're trying to quote more and win more business having underwriting, spending a lot of time, unpacking all this unstructured data and PDF documents or Excel spreadsheets, from the carrier makes it elongates the time pretty extensively and using automation and artificial intelligence is a place where there's a great opportunity to automate that make all that loss information and insights readily available to the underwriters. So they're not spending six hours trying to unpack that information, but the time better spent underwriting and pricing that risk and thinking about what other products and what other lines of insurance we can provide to that organization.
Kelley Kage: (
Definitely. I know in the commercial space, we see this a lot where we have at Liberty been able to integrate and pull a lot of S E C data on publicly traded companies where previously underwriters were having to ask for those financials to be emailed over and uploaded and processed. So it's really taking a step back and thinking about those pain points. And again, we looked at data that was publicly available and said, how do we make that agent? And that underwriter's life easier, but it actually makes the customer's life a lot easier, cuz they're not having to track down all of that paperwork and say, what are you really looking for? And having to have constant back and forth there. So it goes right into that second topic, which is the customer experience. So really thinking about how do we make it seamless for the customers?
Kelley Kage: (
So we've talked about the agent aspect, which is critical, but the customers, they want it easy. They don't want to have to have a lot of back and forth and a lot of questions about what does this coverage mean? How do we help them easily understand it and get what they need and move on? And then how do we help empower them with all of the data that we have that's available? How do we really help them understand that coverage? When I think about getting a policy emailed to me, my umbrella coverage, for example, I read through the first two or three pages, and then you're like, what does this mean? And being in the insurance industry, if we're asking those questions, the normal everyday person is probably doing the same thing. So the last piece around that customer experience, where I talked about the example with the car dealers, for example, it's customizing the experience that our customers need thinking about what is the right level of attention.
Kelley Kage: (
If you have an easy question, an easy policy to get the coverage for, make it a quick and easy interaction, but where the agents need to focus that attention in that time, let's make it available to them. And let's make it easy to interact, whether that's through chatbot type services for a quick and easy question, or Hey, click here and somebody will call you and you can get your question answered, but it's also through that process. You're adding a layer of empathy and helping that customer and saying, Hey, what? This is hard. We wanna help you through learning the details there and really caring about our customers.
Heather Cavallaro: (
I just love that word empathy, because you have to kind of step back while we're working at carriers and we're it's a fun and exciting industry. Most times when these businesses are individuals are interacting with insurance, especially if it's a claim, they're not having a great day so having that sense of empathy and helping them navigate with ease is critically important for us as carriers. I know, you kind of refer to the language on the policy PA I, I don't pretend to understand the language I just know that, when you want to easily understand where are your locations, what coverages, deductibles and limits that you have and what does your coverage look like? You want it to be easy and simple, and we've spent a lot of time kind of renovating and reimagining like a digital, we call it our digital deck but really a digital experience that allows people to easily see that type of information. That's normally just buried in policy packages that are sometimes even still mailed. But hopefully digitally delivered at this day and age, but again, just love that word
Kelley Kage: (
Empathy, definitely. So in the middle here, we have enhanced technology. This to me comes when we have started to figure out some of the other pieces on the page and then come back to how does technology help enhance the process? So when we talk about automation, I'm not talking about artificial intelligence, I'm not talking about data analytics. I'm talking about automating the easy stuff, the manual work that takes people away from adding the value, scanning things online, manually typing information into different systems. How do we automate those pieces? So the agents are really focused on the customer experience. And then as we start to automate those pieces, then it's starting to identify now, what can we do to help better improve those interactions that the agents are having with the customers? And then we talked about the customer experience. The agent experience is equally as important.
Kelley Kage: (
As I mentioned before, it's a 50 50. We have to care about both for that partnership to be successful. And to do that, we have to help our agents be better informed when there are changes to regulations and policies that are out there. I know we had a panel earlier this morning on that in particular, there's so much data regulation and so many things that are changing with privacy laws. We wanna make sure our agents have that information upfront, that they're able to speak intelligently about those topics to their customers. So how do we help them stay on top of the industry trends that are out there and updates to the products that we offer and the services that are available and remind them, Hey, you've got some customers that might benefit from this. So it's also helping those agents meet the customers where they are. We have a wide range of people buying policies right now. So you've got people that don't want anything to do with the internet and they wanna pick up the phone and they want to speak to somebody. They want to meet somebody in person. And then you've got the total other end of the spectrum. I don't wanna talk to anybody. Let me just enter my information and move ahead. So we need the agents to be able to add value at all steps for either end of that spectrum there, right?
Heather Cavallaro: (
It's fascinating because you have these customer personas that embody that behavior but you also have the same agent personas that embody those type of behaviors in terms of how digital savvy or how personalized and kind of more conversational, they need to be ensuring that we have solutions and support for all those types of behaviors and push personas is a challenge but also really important.
Kelley Kage: (
Definitely. And the most important thing is that last line item between the agent and broker and customer experience, it's having the agents ability to spend time where it's most valuable, where it's going to be most profitable for them and how we can help them make that happen. And when you take these pieces and combine it, you get the last area, the competitive advantage when we're able to build in AI automation, really think about the value and the experience and that process. You're actually gonna see some expense savings through leveraging some of the technology there to streamline that. So you've got the easy things that you can just push right through and the agents are spending their time on the most profitable value, add tasks, but it also increases the quality of the data that we're collecting. It makes it so that we're providing a more consistent experience regardless of the channel that somebody's coming through. And in turn, you're actually gonna see the loyalty of the customers and the agents, because loyalty today doesn't come from a commercial that you see on television, like an umbrella logo or an EMU running across on a commercial. It's about the experience and people are willing to pay a little bit more for a better experience if they feel like they're getting the right value. It all comes back to that value.
Heather Cavallaro: (
Along the lines, as Kelly was just discussing things to keep in mind with your agent and broker strategies. We established some guiding principles to help guide us. I'm sure most of you heard of minimum viable products. We started talking in terms of minimum viable experience. What is the minimum experience that we need to have in mind for agents and customers, when we're making decisions around what solutions we wanna lean into and where we're gonna make investments and what features are making the list and which ones, kind of end up on the floor or waiting and waiting in a backlog. So the first one really is being an agent centric. And, that's more than just thinking about the agent and putting yourself in their shoes, it's really around.
Heather Cavallaro: (
How do you infuse CX practices into your processes around building solutions and understanding where you're gonna focus as an organization, with technology, your business partners and your customer strategists all at the table. And so, so when I talk about those CX strategies, it's things like regular focus groups studies, and even deeper when you're building and you have something to kind of test and learn or show them getting feedback and trying to get to the actual people at the agency that are using that capability, can sometimes be tricky because you're meeting with kind of the top side leaders of that agency. We found some fun ways to say, Hey, if you liked this experience and you're willing to let us talk to you, drop your email address here, or your phone number, and we've actually been able to talk to some of the CSRs to get at, what did you like about the experience and what opportunities do you think that we have?
Heather Cavallaro: (
So, agent centric is more than just trying to put yourself in their shoes, but actually infusing these customer research processes into your own internal development cycles.
Kelley Kage: (
And the one thing I actually wanna add about that is people get nervous about taking agents away from meeting with their customers. Trust me, if you ask for their input, they want to give it and they will give you a lot of it, but you have to make sure that you make it valuable for them, that they understand and have the right expectations about what you're doing with that but do not hesitate to have those conversations because they want you to improve their process.
Heather Cavallaro: (
One of our kind of had a guess that agents were more highly likely to stay in their own ecosystem, in their own agent, broke our platforms, but we found that when they bothered to come into our agent, our agent sites to look for something or look for information they're in there already, and they're willing to transact and do a lot more from a self-service perspective. So we actually threw a pretty simple, very simple app that didn't have a lot of functionality out there for endorsement processing. And we thought we would get a couple hits on it. We had like over 700 within a week and it was so pop. It was so popular with and this is just small commercial segment. It was so popular. We couldn't even take it down.
Heather Cavallaro: (
And now it's like has a thousand hits. And we're like, well, I guess we're investing. I guess we're investing in some proprietary, our own systems to be able to take in and to take in endorsements and ultimately do some self-service with our agents. But that was like a very low investment to figure out like, are they gonna even click the button? And they did. So, now we have information and that's where we actually put, Hey, if you're willing to talk to us about this and what you would expect from this capability, let us know. And quite a few people did, and we were able to record those sessions and have those insights. And they were shared with the development staff too. So, being able to connect your technologists to why and what the customers are actually saying about the capability is a great way just to provide some motivation and empathy and actually give them some room for creativity to come up with the right solutions for that ultimate and experience.
Kelley Kage: (
I love what you mentioned about cuz it all comes back to the data. And when you talk to somebody on your technology team, we can track a lot of information in our systems. So you just have to tell us what it is you want to know. And we can probably tell you how many people clicked a button or where people left a page at a certain time. And there's a lot you can take from that and see where people are doing business, where they're getting hung up or where you're seeing more transactions than you expected. So definitely have the conversations cuz the data is the important piece that drives that,
Heather Cavallaro: (
Along those lines. The other one, the rather getting principles was really around simplifying the process. Don't ask questions, we know the answer or where we have the data or where we can get the data or derive the data based upon other information that we already have. So really streamlining and simplifying the process for those agents and customers and getting faster turnaround times, being where is the agent in the process, where have they been, where they are now kind of what's up next. And that's whether it's a new business quote an issuance opportunity or even an endorsement opportunity. We talk a lot about, so especially for large carriers we're large and big to com complex organizations functions from claim billing, risk control, specialized claim assistance for our larger, more complex business.
Heather Cavallaro: (
And then you kind of compound that with small middle, large market and some complexities around those market segments. And then within each line there's expertise in underwriting around auto umbrella. And there's a fly that's really like loving me right now. With all those internal complexities is the last thing we want our agents, our customer staff to do is navigate it. So how do we present them with a unified either team or approach to having a total account solution for that risk. And that's one of the key things that we're focused on is presenting ourself as one organization to the agents and to the customers.
Kelley Kage: (
That to me is critical. We can't let our structure as carriers influence how business is being done. The customer doesn't care that they're calling an agent for small commercial and they can't talk about personal. They want it all in one person. If they reach out to somebody at Liberty or somebody at travelers, they wanna be able to have all of their needs met and we shouldn't have silos around how we make that happen.
Heather Cavallaro: (
So I hope some of these guiding principles are some good takeaways in terms of how you may be thinking about your own agent strategies and again they've served as guideposts for us in terms of top side, high level investments but also even at the team level where we're trying to make decisions on what features or how to prioritize the features or how to shape them to really meet those external challenges
Kelley Kage: (
And these guiding principles here, I think are for the industry. They aren't specific to either of our companies, you're gonna see this across the board.
Heather Cavallaro: (
So with that, I'd love to pass it over to Kelly to help wrap us up and welcome questions. I think we have at least five minutes for some,
Kelley Kage: (
Yeah, we definitely wanna open it up for questions. And then we'd love to hear from all of you, if you're seeing any other trends that we haven't mentioned, we'd love to have it just be an open dialogue.
Speaker 4: (
So Kelly, you talked about the API economy and I was just wondering how you've navigated that with some of your agents and brokers that have investments in their own portals, how have you worked with them to create some standardization or just, how have you navigated that?
Kelley Kage: (
So it was critical when we were building those APIs to make sure we understood what they were doing in their portals, how they were interacting and what data we needed to provide. So we did a lot of sit down conversations with multiple agents and brokers and I see Heather they're shaking her head. Yes. So she's probably setting the same thing, but we wanted to make sure what we were building was actually the right thing. And if we didn't have that conversation up front and find something that was gonna be mutually beneficial, nobody would use it. Right. So we had to make sure we were having those right conversations. And it was a little awkward at first cause everybody's like, can we share this? I don't know if we can talk this level of detail, but you have to get people comfortable with understanding the mutual benefit that both groups are getting by making that experience that much better. And so what we tried to do is build those APIs in a way that are streamlined that any agent or broker could pick up and use. There's probably more data out there and available through those APIs than any of those agents or brokers need. But we're trying to make sure that we can hit all types of users that want to use that information so that we're not having to do different customizations. And then on our side, it really lets us narrow down the support costs and what it takes to maintain that longer term.
Heather Cavallaro: (
I think it was about four or five years ago now I was starting to lead our digital transformation for business insurance. And one of the key components of it is an API strategy and the hardest thing was okay, but what do you, what APIs do you want me to build? Which key capabilities are gonna matter and make a difference to the business and at the end of the day when you're trying to connect whether it's auto and they're all different, right? They're all gonna be different in underneath the covers of that API. So trying to get to the right capabilities to focus on was definitely a series of conversations with the agents around, what are your pain points?
Heather Cavallaro: (
What are the opportunities? What are you seeing a lot from the market? And where we can start focus. And I know small commercial was almost an easy place to start cause a lot of the businesses flow there where you can kind of just do some simple quote indications. And then over time it evolves and kind of moves up market, but it was definitely a challenge cuz you kind of started on the technology side, you to have an API strategy, but what are we building was kind of the big question four or five years ago. So we started to figure it out. So that's great.
Kelley Kage: (
And I like to go back to the example of Google maps. When we think about the amount that we put into an API, you want it to have specific functionality nobody should be going and building their own version of Google maps, but that can be used anywhere. Exactly. But it's very specific. So when we talk about these API portals, that's exactly what we're trying to do is break down that functionality into specific actions that are going to be helpful, but it makes it easier to then plug those pieces in and they call it microservices in the technology industry. But it's really thinking about that from a functionality perspective and where you can plug in the right connectors, any other questions, any other trends that anybody's seeing that we might have missed?
Heather Cavallaro: (
One thing I'll offer that I probably neglected to put in this deck is just the change management around implementing and bringing technology especially to your internal employees, agents and underwriters. It's a change for them to be able to trust the information that they're seeing, cuz they didn't research it on themselves. So when you're hitting them information and insights there's some change management around that. So definitely, keep that in mind as you're developing your strategy and kind of helping people along the change of what technology and what the information is gonna help them with and how to help them along.
Kelley Kage: (
Yeah, definitely. Well, hopefully the key take away that you got from this is what we are seeing is that the agents and brokers are critical to the success of carriers and making sure that we have the right relationships there and how we think about streamlining the process and having technology supported.
Heather Cavallaro: (
Thank you so much.
Kelley Kage: (
Yeah. Feel free to reach out and connect with us on LinkedIn. Yep.
Nate Golia: (
Thank you so much, Kelly and Heather.