Articles
A Key to Retaining Professional Staff: Focus Them on Value
Experienced producers and underwriters can be difficult and costly to find for many managing general agents, program administrators and retail brokers. So these companies want to keep their best staff and avoid hiring new ones unnecessarily.
But turnover rates can rise when underwriters and producers get caught in an insurance processing bottleneck -- backed up with data entry and repetitive tasks that never seemed to end. When the onslaught of repetitive tasks cuts into sales and customer service, career-minded employees feel frustrated and may start to look elsewhere.
“If you have a dedicated staff trying to fill all of these roles, then you will know the problem of finding, hiring, training and retraining,” says David Watkins, CEO of ReSource Pro, an offshore insurance processing company based in New York City.
One way to keep employees motivated and happy is to outsource repetitive insurance processing tasks. When your staff can focus on what they were hired to do—build and solidify client relationships—they will be motivated to succeed and want to stay and share in your success.
Focusing on the Front End
Unlike traditional outsourcing solutions, ReSource Pro’s solution does not involve downsizing or cost cutting measures. Instead, it allows expert sales professionals to refocus their time and energy on what they do best: customer service and new business prospects. Experience shows employees are more productive, and happier, when they can focus on the high value areas of their work.
“Our staff loves outsourcing because it relieves them of a lot of the data entry and clerical tasks that they were struggling with,” says Jim Tesarerro, national production manager at Distinguished Programs Group, which founded ReSource Pro in 2003 when its underwriting staff was overwhelmed with new submissions. “It has enabled them to focus on the front end and take care of the customer.”
Indeed, motivated producers want to move up the value chain, not be bogged down with data entry. And employers find that nurturing their producers' need for career development reaps benefits for their customers and their bottom line.
“Outsourcing has helped us retain business," Tesarerro says. "I believe that people don’t shop us as much because we’re able to build certainty, and ReSource Pro helps us build certainty.”
By sending their processing to ReSource Pro's offshore location, Distinguished Programs Group gained a cost-effective overnight shift for 24-hour operations. ReSource Pro connects remotely to any agency management system, reducing disruption and investment in new technology. Like an extension of staff, ReSource Pro can review and process all clean renewals and identify problem accounts, reporting to clients which accounts have not been renewed and why. They can take care of all policy issuance, policy rating, processing, billing and more.
“It’s all electronic,” Tesarerro says. “You send it off at night, and when you come in the morning, you power up and, ‘Voila!’ All your work is done. It’s phenomenal.
Sharing in the Profits of Business Growth
Outsourcing routine processing tasks not only helps retain staff, but also reduces the need to hire and train more new staff. Freed from repetitive, low-value tasks, producers and underwriters can handle more high-value business development and customer retention.
This was the experience of Paul Hanson Partners in Napa, Calif., one of many regions where it is quite difficult to find affordable, dependable and high-quality staff.
“Hiring in our area of California is very difficult. There are not a lot of licensed insurance professionals here,” says Lisa Paul, president and CEO of Paul Hansen Partners, a direct retail brokerage and program administrator specializing in the transportation industry.
Last year the staff at Paul Hanson found it could not keep up with the volume of new submissions for the company's Mover's Choice division, a national program administrator for AIG. In addition, the new AIG processing system was more complex than Mover Choice's older system and it increased the amount of processing time for every submission.
“At that time, our employees were working somewhere between 28 to 30 percent of their hours in overtime,” Paul says. “They were very dedicated, capable people but were getting burned out.”
The company moved their processing activities to ReSource Pro, whose experts learned the AIG processing system, providing the 24/5 labor needed to relieve the processing bottleneck. ReSource Pro took on responsibility for hiring, training and assuring delivery of their back office processes. The company also integrated Paul Hanson Partners direct retail operation with ReSource Pro, achieving similar results.
“When I first thought of ReSource Pro, I envisioned a group of people working in China who were faceless and nameless,” Paul says. “But now I simply think of them as our evening crew. The operations and processes are being integrated to a far greater depth than I had originally thought was possible,” Paul says.
As a result, Paul Hanson Partners began to grow rapidly and Paul was ready to search for a new underwriter. "But the staff asked me to hold off on that hire,” she says.
Since they were not working overtime anymore, the underwriters split up the requirements of that book of business. In lieu of hiring somebody else, Paul agreed to raise their salary commensurate with a new underwriter’s salary. So not only did it improve morale, it made an impact on their paycheck.