Patent Application
20230036557
Various aspects of the disclosure generally relate to systems and methods of requesting, generating, and providing commercial insurance growth data based on commercial insurance growth goals, agent characteristics, insurance statistics, and configurable assumptions.
Although insurance agents sell insurance policies to customers on behalf of insurance providers, the insurance agents themselves often operate independently from the insurance providers. For instance, insurance agents may operate as independent businesses with respect to selecting office locations and sizes, hiring staff, acquiring and serving customers, setting revenue and growth goals, and other business decisions. Some insurance agents may specialize in particular policy types (e.g., home, automobile, life, health, or business) and/or particular types of customers, while other agents may maintain insurance practices covering multiple policy types and a broad range of customer types.
When an insurance agent seeks to grow its business, it may do so by adding new customers or by selling additional policies (or larger policies) to its existing customers. When attempting to acquire new customers, many insurance agents may focus on potential customers from the same geographic region as the agent’s current offices, and potential customers having similar insurance needs as their existing customers. By focusing on these types of potential customers, the insurance agent may feel confident that they will be able to provide quality service to all new customers.
The following presents a simplified summary in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. The summary is not an extensive overview of the disclosure. It is neither intended to identify key or critical elements of the disclosure nor to delineate the scope of the disclosure. The following summary merely presents some concepts of the disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the description below.
Aspects of the disclosure relate to systems, apparatuses, computer-implemented methods, and computer-readable media executable by insurance provider servers and insurance agent computing devices, for receiving and responding to requests for commercial insurance growth data from insurance agents. According to certain aspects, insurance provider servers may be configured to receive commercial insurance information requests from insurance agent devices, determine sets of insurance agent characteristics for the corresponding insurance agents, generate commercial insurance growth data packages based on sets of agent characteristics and other data, and transmit the commercial insurance growth data packages back to the insurance agent devices. The sets of agent characteristics may be provided by an insurance agent user via a software user interface, and/or may be retrieved from an insurance agent database. According to additional aspects, one or more business segments of commercial insurance may be selected by the insurance agent, or may be selected for the insurance agent via an analysis by an insurance provider. The selected business segments may be used to generate the customized commercial insurance growth data for the insurance agent, including specific industry analyses, business action plans, sales leads, and additional relevant commercial insurance growth data.
Other features and advantages of the disclosure will be apparent from the additional description provided herein.
A more complete understanding of the present invention and the advantages thereof may be acquired by referring to the following description in consideration of the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numbers indicate like features, and wherein:
In the following description of the various embodiments, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof, and in which is shown by way of illustration, various embodiments of the disclosure that may be practiced. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized.
As will be appreciated by one of skill in the art upon reading the following disclosure, various aspects described herein may be embodied as a method, a computer system, or a computer program product. Accordingly, those aspects may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects. Furthermore, such aspects may take the form of a computer program product stored by one or more computer-readable storage media having computer-readable program code, or instructions, embodied in or on the storage media. Any suitable computer readable storage media may be utilized, including hard disks, CD-ROMs, optical storage devices, magnetic storage devices, and/or any combination thereof. In addition, various signals representing data or events as described herein may be transferred between a source and a destination in the form of electromagnetic waves traveling through signal-conducting media such as metal wires, optical fibers, and/or wireless transmission media (e.g., air and/or space).
Input/Output (I/O) 109 may include a microphone, keypad, touch screen, and/or stylus through which a user of the computing device 101 may provide input, and may also include one or more of a speaker for providing audio output and a video display device for providing textual, audiovisual and/or graphical output. Software may be stored within memory 115 and/or storage to provide instructions to processor 103 for enabling device 101 to perform various actions. For example, memory 115 may store software used by the device 101, such as an operating system 117, application programs 119, and an associated internal database 121. The various hardware memory units in memory 115 may include volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data. Certain devices/systems within a commercial insurance data system may have minimum hardware requirements in order to support sufficient storage capacity, analysis capacity, network communication, etc. For instance, in some embodiments, one or more nonvolatile hardware memory units having a minimum size (e.g., at least 1 gigabyte (GB), 2 GB, 5 GB, etc.), and/or one or more volatile hardware memory units having a minimum size (e.g., 256 megabytes (MB), 512 MB, 1 GB, etc.) may be used in a device 101 (e.g., an agent desktop 101, a mobile computing device 101, an insurance server 101, etc.), in order to store and execute a commercial insurance data analysis software application, to collect and analyze agent characteristics, and to generate commercial insurance growth data packages as described below. Memory 115 also may include one or more physical persistent memory devices and/or one or more non-persistent memory devices. Memory 115 may include, but is not limited to, random access memory (RAM) 105, read only memory (ROM) 107, electronically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM), flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disks (DVD) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium that can be used to store the desired information and that can be accessed by processor 103.
Processor 103 may include a single central processing unit (CPU), which may be a single-core or multi-core processor (e.g., dual-core, quad-core, etc.), or may include multiple CPUs. Processor(s) 103 may have various bit sizes (e.g., 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, 96-bit, 128-bit, etc.) and various processor speeds (ranging from 100 MHz to 5 Ghz or faster). Processor(s) 103 and its associated components may allow the system 101 to execute a series of computer-readable instructions, for example, to receive and process information requests for commercial insurance data, retrieve commercial insurance data statistics, configure various commercial insurance assumptions, and generate commercial insurance growth data packages based on insurance agent characteristics.
The computing device (e.g., an insurance agent client computing device, an insurance provider server, etc.) may operate in a networked environment 100 supporting connections to one or more remote computers, such as terminals 141 and 151. The terminals 141 and 151 may be personal computers, servers (e.g., web servers, database servers), or mobile communication devices (e.g., mobile phones, portable computing devices, and the like), and may include some or all of the elements described above with respect to the computing device 101. The network connections depicted in
Also illustrated in
As discussed below, the data transferred to and from various devices in the computing system 100 may include secure and sensitive data, such as the confidential business data of insurance agents, growth goals, commercial insurance statistics and assumptions, sales leads, and insurance customer data. Therefore, it may be desirable to protect transmissions of such data by using secure network protocols and encryption, and also to protect the integrity of the data when stored on in a database or other storage in an agent’s desktop computer(s), an agent’s mobile device(s), and insurance provider server, or other computing devices in the system 100, by using the security and integration layer 160 to authenticate users and restrict access to unknown or unauthorized users. In various implementations, security and integration layer 160 may provide, for example, a file-based integration scheme or a service-based integration scheme for transmitting data between the various devices in a system 100. Data may be transmitted through the security and integration layer 160, using various network communication protocols. Secure data transmission protocols and/or encryption may be used in file transfers to protect to integrity of the driving data, for example, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), and/or Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption. In other examples, one or more web services may be implemented within the various devices 101 in the system 100 and/or the security and integration layer 160. The web services may be accessed by authorized external devices and users to support input, extraction, and manipulation of the data (e.g., insurance agent business data, sales lead data, etc.) between the various devices 101 in the system 100. Web services built to support system 100 may be cross-domain and/or cross-platform, and may be built for enterprise use. Such web services may be developed in accordance with various web service standards, such as the Web Service Interoperability (WS-I) guidelines. In some examples, a commercial insurance agent data and/or sales lead data web service may be implemented in the security and integration layer 160 using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol to provide secure connections between servers 101 and various clients 141 and 151 (e.g., desktop or mobile devices, insurance servers, data source servers, etc.). SSL or TLS may use HTTP or HTTPS to provide authentication and confidentiality. In other examples, such web services may be implemented using the WS-Security standard, which provides for secure SOAP messages using XML encryption. In still other examples, the security and integration layer 160 may include specialized hardware for providing secure web services. For example, secure network appliances in the security and integration layer 160 may include built-in features such as hardware-accelerated SSL and HTTPS, WS-Security, and firewalls. Such specialized hardware may be installed and configured in the security and integration layer 160 in front of the web servers, so that any external devices may communicate directly with the specialized hardware.
Although not shown in
It will be appreciated that the network connections shown are illustrative and other means of establishing a communications link between the computers may be used. The existence of any of various network protocols such as TCP/IP, Ethernet, FTP, HTTP and the like, and of various wireless communication technologies such as GSM, CDMA, WiFi, and WiMAX, is presumed, and the various computer devices and system components described herein may be configured to communicate using any of these network protocols or technologies.
Additionally, one or more application programs 119 may be used by the various computing devices 101 within system 100 (e.g., commercial insurance data analysis software applications, sales lead generation software applications, commercial growth data package generation software applications, etc.), including computer executable instructions for submitting and processing requests for commercial insurance data, retrieving commercial insurance data and configuring commercial insurance assumptions, generating commercial insurance growth data packages based on insurance agent characteristics, and performing other related functions as described herein.
Insurance provider server 220 in the commercial insurance growth data system 200 may be, for example, a computer server having some or all of the structural components described above for computing device 101. As described below in more detail, an insurance provider server 220 may be configured to provide one or more software applications related to commercial insurance growth goal to provide commercial insurance growth software applications to insurance agents 210, to analyze commercial insurance data, and to generate commercial insurance growth data packages for insurance agents. In order to perform these and others functions described herein, in some embodiments, an insurance provider server 220 may include one or more processing units (e.g., single-core, dual-core, or quad-core processors, etc.) having a minimum sufficient bit size (e.g., 32-bit, 64-bit, 96-bit, 128-bit, etc.) and minimum required processor speeds (e.g., 500 MHz, 1 GHz, etc.), and sufficient volatile and nonvolatile memory (e.g., at least 256 MB of RAM, at least 5 GB of memory, etc.), in order to store and execute one or more such commercial insurance software applications (e.g., including various different versions, upgrades, etc.), establish communication sessions with and distribute applications to various insurance agent computing devices 210, receive and process data from computing devices 210, 230, and 250, and generate commercial insurance growth data for insurance agents. Additionally, as described below, private and secure data may be transmitted between the insurance provider server 220 and various computing devices 210, 230, and 250, such as insurance agent business data, sales lead data, etc. Therefore, in some embodiments, an insurance provider server 220 may include various security and/or integration components (e.g., web servers, authentication servers) and/or various network components (e.g., firewalls, routers, gateways, load balancers, etc.). The insurance provider server 220 also may provide and/or require communications over certain secure protocols or encryption techniques (e.g., FTP or SFTP, PGP, HTTP or HTTPS, SOAP, XML encryption, etc.), in order to protect the private or secure data transmitted between the insurance provider server 220 and various computing devices 210, 230 and 250.
The commercial insurance growth data system 200 in this example also includes a plurality of client computing devices configured to communicate with the insurance provider server 220, including insurance agent client devices 210 and insurance provider client devices 230. Insurance agent devices 210 may include personal computers, mobile devices, and servers operated by insurance agents associated with to the insurance provider. Insurance provider devices 230 may include similar devices that are operated by employees or administrators of the insurance provider itself, rather than by an insurance agent associated with the insurance provider. As discussed below, insurance agent client devices 210 and insurance provider client devices 230 each may be configured to receive and execute software, and to interact with the insurance provider server 220. For example, insurance provider client devices 230 may interact with the insurance provider server 220 to set commercial insurance assumption data 221, retrieve and update insurance agent data 225, and configure interactions with various commercial insurance data sources 250. Insurance agent client devices 210 may interact with the insurance provider server 220 to request and receive commercial insurance growth data, directly or via client applications (e.g., web-based or mobile applications) executing on the agent devices 210. Insurance agent client devices 210 may also upload agent data 225 and/or customize certain commercial insurance assumptions 221 when executing certain growth scenarios, as described below. Accordingly, in various different embodiments, client computing devices 210 and 230 may include one or more processing units having a minimum sufficient bit size (e.g., 32-bit, 64-bit, etc.) and minimum required processor speeds (e.g., 233 MHz, 500 MHz, etc.), and sufficient volatile and nonvolatile memory (e.g., at least 256 MB of RAM, at least 1 GB of memory, etc.), in order to store and execute commercial insurance software applications, execute its designated functionality, and establish communications with an insurance provider server 220 and/or various other devices (e.g., other client devices 210 and 230, data sources 250, etc.) to transmit or receive insurance agent data, commercial insurance statistics and assumptions, sales lead data, etc. Additionally, the client computing devices 210 and 230 may receive and transmit private or secure data, such as insurance agent business data, sales lead data, etc. Therefore, in some embodiments, the client computing devices 210 and 230 may include various network components (e.g., firewalls, routers, gateways, load balancers, etc.), and may provide and/or require communications over certain secure protocols or encryption techniques (e.g., FTP or SFTP, PGP, HTTP or HTTPS, SOAP, XML encryption, etc.)
As shown in
To perform analyses of insurance agent characteristics and growth specifications, and to generate commercial insurance growth data packages, an insurance provider server 220 may receive data from additional computer systems 250 having data that may be relevant to the commercial insurance agent analyses and determinations. For example, one or more sales lead data sources 250a may store sales lead data that includes the leads themselves (e.g., potential customer names, contact information, business profile information, business locations, etc.) as well as additional metrics, metadata, or characteristics relating to the leads (e.g., prices of leads, newness of leads, exclusivity of leads, previous attempts to contact or close leads, etc.). Additionally, commercial insurance statistics data sources 250b may store and provide commercial insurance data to the server 220, for example, average commercial insurance premiums, deductibles, and coverage limits (e.g., by business segment, business size, insurance type, geographic location, etc.), previous insurance claim data and settlement data (e.g., across various business segments, geographic locations, business sizes, insurance providers, etc.), commercial insurance liability limits in various jurisdictions, and other types of commercial insurance data. As discussed below in
Referring now to
In step 301, an insurance provider server (e.g., server 220) may provide a commercial insurance growth application to an insurance agent computer device (e.g., device 210), and in step 302 the insurance agent device 210 may receive and execute the commercial insurance growth application. As discussed below, such commercial insurance growth applications may allow insurance agents to request information and explore options for growing their commercial insurance businesses. Insurance agents that offer commercial insurance coverage to clients may specialize or focus on certain specific business segments. A business segment may refer to a collection of businesses that offer specific product or service types, or groups of related products or services. Business segments may include small, medium, or large businesses specializing in a specific product or service types, as well as distinguishable components of multi-segment business (e.g., business that sell products or services in multiple different segments). An example list of business segments is included in Appendix A. As discussed below in more detail, insurance provider servers may store separate data sets of commercial insurance data for each of the business segments listed in Appendix A (or other business segments lists) and may customize and provide agent-specific commercial insurance data sets corresponding to one or more business segments to an insurance agent.
The commercial insurance growth application may be provided to the insurance agent computer device 210 in steps 301-302 by means of a web page, or other web-based or non-web-based application. In some implementations of
In any of these examples, an insurance agent device 210 may be required to provide valid credentials of an authorized insurance agent to the server 220 before accessing certain features and functionality of the server 220, such as a secure web-page for querying and retrieving commercial insurance data and leads, or before downloading a commercial insurance growth application. Whether communicating via web pages or with separate applications downloaded in steps 301-302, the insurance provider server 220 and insurance agent client 210 may be configured to use secure data transmission protocols and/or encryption, either for all communications, or for selected secure communications (e.g., transmission of agent data, sales leads, etc.).
In step 303, the commercial insurance growth software (e.g., website or application) executing on the insurance agent device 210 may receive various input data from the insurance agent (or an employee or representative of the insurance agent), for example, data describing the commercial insurance growth goals and/or various agent characteristics of the insurance agent. As discussed below, the commercial insurance growth software may be configured to provide customized commercial insurance growth data to insurance agents based on the insurance agent data collected. The data received in step 303 may be collected from the insurance agent via a form, wizard, or other interactive user interface.
The insurance agent input data received from the insurance agent in step 303 may include, for example, agent identification information, current agent business information, and the insurance agent’s commercial insurance growth goals. Insurance agent identification information may include, for example, the agent’s name, address, agent number or identifier, etc. In some cases, the interactive software tool might not be tied to a specific insurance provider, and thus the agent may be prompted to input the associated insurance provider(s) under which the agent operates. The current business information received from the agent in step 303 may include one or more of the agent’s current size in number of employees, number of offices, number and types of customers, average customer sizes and account sizes, the agent type (e.g., level of seniority at the insurance provider), current amount of commercial insurance revenue, current amount of non-commercial revenue, etc. The commercial growth goals received from the insurance agent in step 303 may include the amount of growth the agent would like to achieve (e.g., in number of commercial customers, size of total commercial insurance revenues or premiums, amounts of commercial insurance coverage provided, etc.).
In some cases, certain agent data may be retrieved automatically by accessing various external data sources, so that the insurance agent need not manually input such information in step 303. For example, commercial insurance growth software executing on the agent device 210 and/or on the insurance server 220 may be configured to retrieve current agent identification information (e.g., agent size, office locations, etc.) and current business information (e.g., current customers, current revenue data, etc.) from an insurance agent database 225 or third-party insurance agent data source 250 (not shown in
In some embodiments, insurance agents anonymously access and use the commercial insurance growth software tools, thereby allowing agents to input different combinations of current business data and commercial growth goals, including various combinations of accurate data and hypothetical data, to run specific business growth scenarios. In some cases, when an insurance agent uses the commercial insurance growth software anonymously, they may receive only a subset of the commercial growth data that identified and authorized agents would receive. For example, an agent anonymously using the software might receive industry analyses for certain business segments and a recommended number of sales leads needed to meet growth goals, but might not receive the sales leads themselves.
Additionally, the insurance agent may identify one or more specific business segments in step 303. Any business segments identified by the insurance agent may correspond to types of businesses for which the agent would like to enter the commercial insurance market or grow their commercial insurance business. For instance, the commercial insurance growth software on the insurance agent device 210 may display a selectable list of business segment types (e.g., Appendix A), which may be sorted or organized by industry or market sector. If the insurance agent has a particular interest, or relevant background knowledge pertaining to one or more of the business segments, the agent may select these within the user interface as desirable growth areas. The selected business segments may correspond to businesses for the agent is already involved and seeks to growth the business, or to new business segments that the agent is not currently involved in.
If an insurance agent selects one or more desired business segments in step 303, the insurance server 220 may be more likely to include the selected segments in the commercial insurance growth data package generated for the agent. However, if one or more of the business segments selected by the insurance agent is not appropriate for the agent, for example, based on the agent’s current business and growth goals, then the insurance provider server 220 may determine that the business segment(s) selected by the agent should not be included in the agent’s commercial insurance growth package, and may select other business segments instead. In other examples, the commercial insurance growth software may be configured to restrict the agent’s selections to specific business segments or industry sectors, or so that the agent cannot select any specific business segments. In such examples, the determinations of business segments for growing the agent’s commercial insurance business may be determined entirely by the insurance provider server 220 without any preferred business segments selected by the agent.
In step 304, the insurance provider server 220 may receive the agent characteristics and commercial insurance growth information from the insurance agent device 210 and/or other sources. For example, after retrieving agent identifying information in step 304, the insurance provider server 220 may be configured to retrieve various agent characteristics (e.g., agent size, locations, customers, revenue, etc.) from an insurance agent database 225 and/or third-party insurance agent data sources 250 (not shown in
Additional information may be retrieved by the insurance provider server 220 in step 304, such as a set of configurable assumptions for commercial insurance growth and a set of relevant commercial insurance statistics. As discussed below, the insurance provider server 220 may use configurable assumptions and insurance statistics to generate the commercial insurance growth data for an insurance agent.
Various combinations of different configurable commercial insurance assumptions may be supported in different implementations. The commercial insurance assumptions may relate to the commercial insurance book of the insurance agent (or a general insurance agent), such as the policy retention rate for commercial auto insurance policies, the policy retention rate for commercial business owners policies (BOP), the projected increase or decrease in the renewal rate for commercial auto insurance policies, and the projected increase or decrease in the renewal rate for commercial BOP policies. Additional commercial insurance assumptions may relate to the insurance agent’s commissions, such as an agency success factor (e.g., 0-5%), a customer experience commission (e.g. 0-5%), a household bundling commission (e.g., 0-5%), a portfolio growth commission (e.g., 0-10%), and an agency development bonus commission. Additional potential assumptions may relate to sales lead estimation, such as a sales lead turnover ratio assumption (e.g., quotes per sales lead contact) and a sales lead close ratio (e.g., sales per quote), and/or other sales lead expenses, such as a telemarketing cost assumption.
Along with the configurable assumptions discussed above, the insurance provider server 220 may retrieve a set of commercial insurance statistics in step 304, which may be used to generate the commercial insurance growth data for the insurance agent in step 305. Such commercial insurance statistics may include insurance premium data, such as the average premium price for different types of commercial insurance policies (e.g., commercial auto, commercial BOP), for different business segments, in different geographic locations (e.g., cities, states, etc.).
Referring now to
In step 305, the insurance provider server 220 may generate a commercial growth data package for the insurance agent, based on the agent’s characteristics and commercial growth goals and/or the additional assumptions and insurance data received in step 304. As discussed below, the commercial growth data package may be a customized data package including, for example, a set of suggested business segments for the insurance agent, market analyses and risk and coverage options for the selected business segments, and business plans and growth projections for the insurance agent to achieve the desired commercial growth goals. Additionally, the commercial growth data may include the sales lead data (e.g., a required number of leads, lead sources and costs, etc.) and/or the sales leads themselves that correspond to the agent’s commercial growth plan.
As part of generating the commercial growth data package in step 305, the insurance provider server 220 may identify one or more recommended business segments for the insurance agent. Recommendations of business segments for the insurance agent may be based on the insurance agent’s characteristics (e.g., locations, office sizes and personnel, current book of business and specialized knowledge and facilities), and the insurance agent’s growth goals (e.g., amount of desired growth and time period for desired growth).
A variety of analyses techniques may be used to identify business segment recommendations for the insurance agent in step 305. In some cases, the insurance provider server 220 may analyze all commercial businesses in the geographic region near the insurance agent. For example, a geographic region corresponding to a configurable radius distance (e.g., 5 miles, 10 miles, 20 miles, etc.) from each of the agent’s office locations may be selected, and all businesses within that geographic region may be identified and cataloged. Such a catalog may include all business segment types in the geographic region of the agent, the numbers of businesses of each segment type, the average sizes of the businesses from each type, etc. For example, an analysis of a geographic region near the various offices of a first insurance agent may determine that several beauty salons are located in this geographic region, while a similar analysis for a second insurance agent may identify several hardware stores near the offices of the second agent, etc. The size of these businesses and other characteristics also may be analyzed in step 305 (e.g., revenues, number of employees, number of vehicles, restricted growth locations, previous insurance claims files, etc.), in order to determine which business segments may be selected (or recommended) for certain insurance agents.
The analysis in step 305 also may include various market analyses and growth forecasts of the different industries and business segments operating near the insurance agent. For instance, the projected industry growth (in revenue and business locations) for different business segments may be analyzed and used to determine which business segments may be selected (or recommended) for certain insurance agents. Recent industry developments and other news may also be considered, such as new taxes or legislation affecting specific industries and/or regions, macroeconomic factors, development of new technologies or new industries in certain industries and/or regions, etc.
Relevant insurance data and competitive analyses of other insurance providers operating in the same industries and/or regions may also be included in the determination of business segments in step 305. For example, the average commercial insurance premiums and insurance claim resolution data for specific industries and/or in specific regions may be analyzed to select one or more business segments for an insurance agent. Additional insurance metrics, such as customer retention rates, sales lead success rates, and the like, may be retrieved for the specific relevant business segments and/or geographic regions, and used in the analysis in step 305. The cost and availability of sales leads in the relevant business segment(s) and geographic area(s) may also be used in the analysis. Competitive analyses may be used for determinations of business segments for insurance agents, including the number and size of insurance competitors in different relevant regions and/or business segments, the insurance products offered and rates charged by competitors, and any recent industry developments regarding competitors (e.g., new commercial insurance competitors expanding into the region, or existing commercial insurance competitors downsizing or leaving an area, etc.).
Additionally, the analysis in step 305 also may include an analysis of the insurance features and characteristics of the insurance agent and insurance provider. For example, one insurance provider may offer certain coverage types, rate guarantees, discounts, or other insurance features not offered by other insurance providers that provide particular advantages for commercial insurance customers in specific business segments and/or in specific geographic regions. Similarly, the office locations, facilities, staff experience and expertise, and other characteristics of the insurance provider or insurance agent may provide advantages for certain potential insurance customers in certain business segments. Thus, these insurance features and characteristics of the insurance agent and insurance provider may also be used to select one or more business segments for the insurance agent in step 305.
After performing an initial selection of the business segment(s) that may be recommended to the insurance agent, the commercial insurance growth goals provided by the insurance agent may be analyzed to develop a feasible business plan for achieving the growth goals by expanding the agent’s commercial business into the selected business segments. In this portion of the analysis in step 305, the sales lead success rates (lead turnover ratio, lead close ratio, etc.), insurance coverage types and average premium rates, customer retention rates, and other insurance data may first be analyzed to determine if it the agent’s commercial growth goals are feasible using the selected business segments. If not, additional business segments may be selected, or the insurance agent may be informed that the selected goals are not feasible at this time. If the agent’s stated commercial growth goals are features, then the analysis in step 305 may include using the retrieved insurance data, such as sales lead success rates, average premiums, customer retention rates, etc., to calculate the number sales leads that will be required for the insurance agent to achieve the commercial insurance growth goals. As discussed above, some or all of this insurance data may be specific to the business segment(s) and/or the relevant geographic region associated with the insurance agent.
The calculation of a sales lead number and the development of a business plan in step 305 may also factor in the costs associated with expanding the commercial business of the insurance agent. For example, the insurance agent may need to incur costs in order to reach its growth goals, such as additional staff, expanded facilities or new office locations, etc. If the business growth plan involves the agent moving into new business segments for which the agent does not have experience or a current customer base, the expected costs may also include personnel training and research into the new business segment. Additionally, sales leads are often purchased from third-party sales lead providers, and thus the costs of the leads (which may depend on business segment, location, the quality or freshness of the leads, etc.) may be factored into the expected growth costs in step 305.
Thus, the business plan developed for the insurance agent in step 305 may incorporate growth projections and expected costs for the agent to enter (or expand) into commercial insurance business in the selected business segments over time to achieve the agent’s growth goals. The business plan may include both short-term and long-term growth projections and costs, with iterative growth projections and goals from the current time until the commercial insurance growth goals are reached. For example, as discussed above, the insurance provider server 220 may calculate the number of sales leads required for the insurance agent to achieve its stated commercial growth goals. In some cases, the calculation of sales may be divided into the different selected business segments and divided by year. For instance, a business plan may involve purchasing and using X sales leads for a first business segment in the first year of the growth plan, then purchasing and using Y sales leads for the first business segment and Z sales leads for a second business segment in the second year of the business plan, etc. As discussed below, the business plan developed in step 305 may also include an action plan including organizational changes, hiring, staff training, and the like, to achieve to the agent’s commercial growth goals.
As discussed above, the analysis in step 305 may include the selection of one or more business segments for an insurance agent, a cost-benefit analysis of entering into (or expanding within) the commercial insurance market for those business segments, and the development of a specific business plan for the agent based on the commercial growth goals input by the insurance agent. In some cases, the business segments may be selected automatically for the insurance agent as described above, for example, using the agent’s office locations and other characteristics, industry and market analyses, and the like. However, in other cases, a commercial insurance growth data system 200 may allow the insurance agent to partially or entirely select the business segments that the agent will enter into (or expand within) to achieve the growth goals. For example, as discussed above, a user interface provided via the insurance agent device 210 may be configured receive selections of desired industries and/or business segments from an insurance agent. In these examples, the insurance provider server 220 may be configured to calculate the growth projections and expected cost, and to develop the business plan for the insurance agent using only the business segments selected by the agent. Alternatively, the insurance provider server 220 in these cases may be configured to develop multiple business plans, including one or more business plans based on the business segments selected by the agent, one or more business plans based on business segments automatically selected for the insurance agent by the insurance provider server 220, and/or one or more business plans based on a combination of the business segments selected by agent and the server 220. In other cases, the insurance provider server 220 may be configured to automatically select and present a list of business segments to the insurance agent via the software user interface, and allow the insurance agent to select or deselect specific business segments based on the agent’s background, expertise, and industry areas of interest. After an insurance agent selects new business segments or deselects existing business segments via the software user interface on the insurance agent device 210, the insurance provider server 220 may update the growth projections, expected costs, action plans, etc., based on the updated set of business segments. Additionally, where applicable, the insurance provider server 220 may be configured to generate multiple commercial insurance growth data packages for the insurance agent in step 305 (e.g., including action plans, growth projections, expected costs, numbers of sales leads required, etc.), for each separate business plan or combination of business segments.
Finally, in step 305, one or more commercial insurance growth data packages may be generated for the insurance agent. A commercial insurance growth data package may include growth projections, expected costs, sales leads, action plans, and a variety of additional information determined based on the analysis described above. The commercial insurance growth data packages may be customized based on the specific agent characteristics and commercial growth goals provided by the agent, as well as based on retrieved insurance statistics, configurable assumptions, market data, and the like. For example, commercial insurance growth data packages may include industry and market analyses for the selected business segments, projected growth analyses for the business segments and the corresponding commercial insurance business, numbers of required sales leads for various business segments, commercial growth action plans, growth forecasts, etc. The commercial insurance growth data packages may also include the underlying insurance data and assumptions upon which the business plans and other data are based on. Additionally, in some cases, the commercial insurance growth data packages may include lists of sales leads, including lead maps.
In some examples, business segment data such as industry analyses, projections, and risk/solution/value data may be provided to insurance agents in step 307, along with the commercial insurance growth data packages corresponding to their selected business segments. In other examples, the software tools provided by the insurance provider server 220 may allow the insurance agent to browse and research relevant industry data for any business segment, for instance, to enable to insurance agent to select desired business segments in step 303. Thus, the insurance provider server 220 and/or a combination of third-party data sources 250 may store and update industry data for a comprehensive list of business segments, such as the business segment list in Appendix A. Such data may include, for example, market growth projections, industry analyses, insurance risk/solution/value data, commercial insurance statistics, a sales lead database, etc., for each separate business segment listed in Appendix A or other business segment list. Thus, interactive software tool shown in
Insurance provider servers 220 may provide sales leads to insurance agent device 210 either at the same time or separately from the commercial insurance growth data package (step 307). In either cases, the insurance provider server 220 may retrieve those leads from an internal lead database or may purchase the leads from a third-party sales lead provider. In some cases, the insurance provider servers 220 may be configured to monitor and coordinate the distribution of leads to different agents. For example, insurance provider servers 220 divide sales leads into non-overlapping geographic regions for nearby insurance agents. Additionally, after providing a set of sales leads to a first agent, those leads may be locked for a period of time so that they will not be provided to any other agent during the locking period. An insurance provider server 220 may also track the insurance agent’s use of the sales leads, for example, using a software tool and user interfaces in a commercial growth data package to determine which leads the agent has contacted, provided quotes to, closed on, etc., over predetermined time periods. In these examples, if an insurance agent has failed to follow and/or underperformed on a set of sales leads, the leads may be unlocked and potentially provided to other agents based on the performance of the first agent.
Returning now to
Additionally, commercial insurance growth data packages may be stored and transmitted in different data formats, and different display software to be used insurance agent devices 210 in various examples. For instance, a commercial insurance growth data package may take the form a static document (e.g., WORD or PDF), web-based content (e.g., related web pages, scripted content, mark-up data, embedded applets, etc.), or may be an interactive software application that is executable on the insurance agent device 210. In some cases, the data formats(s) used for the commercial insurance growth data packages may depend on preferences of the insurance agent and insurance provider, and/or the device capabilities of the insurance agent device 210. For instance, an insurance agent may provide input in step 303 into the user interface of the software tool requesting a particular format suitable to the agent device 210. Alternatively, the device type and capabilities of the agent device 210 may be automatically detected and provided to the insurance provider server 220. In both cases, the server 220 may potentially generate the package in step 305 in a specific data format based on the agent preferences and/or agent device type and capabilities. For example, if the insurance agent device 210 is a smartphone or other mobile device, then the insurance provider server 220 may generate a simplified version of the data package with less detailed but easily accessible industry data, in order to save network bandwidth and/or device memory while allowing the agent with quick access to the most relevant data on the fly. In contrast, a larger version of the same package may be provided to the insurance agent’s office computers 210, to allow the agent to study the more detailed industry analyses.
While the aspects described herein have been discussed with respect to specific examples including various modes of carrying out aspects of the disclosure, those skilled in the art will appreciate that there are numerous variations and permutations of the above described systems and techniques that fall within the spirit and scope of the invention.
This application is a continuation of and claims priority to U.S. Pat. Application No. 17/091,746, filed Nov. 6, 2020, which claims priority to 14/509,644, filed Oct. 8, 2014, which is now U.S. Pat. No. 10,861,027, issued Jan. 8, 2020, and entitled “Commercial Insurance Growth Data for Agents,” which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 17091746 | Nov 2020 | US |
| Child | 17840877 | US | |
| Parent | 14509644 | Oct 2014 | US |
| Child | 17091746 | US |
