Brian Morton

Typically, the life, health, and annuity sales cycle involves at least four separate entities. First, the prospect client, then the insurance producer, followed by the General Agency (GA) that the producer works through, and finally, the insurance company. More often then not, experienced producers work with several different GA’s and multiple insurance companies. Why is it necessary for insurance producers to work with multiple GA’s and multiple insurance companies? The answer is simple … insurance producers who chose to work with multiple GA’s and multiple insurance companies (aka carriers) have the best interests of their clients at the forefront of their decisions to recommend particular products. For example, a typical GA contracts with say, 15-20 different carriers with which the producer can sell insurance products with. But what happens when a prospective cl... (more)

Simplifying Back Office Processes for Insurance Agents

Novice insurance agents mistakenly believe that once they “sell” an insurance policy to a client, their work is complete.  Most insurance sales people equate “selling” an insurance policy with obtaining a completed application.  In the novice’s mind, all they have to do is send in the application and the insurance company will send them their commission check. However, more experienced insurance agents, or any salesperson for that matter, realize a sale is consummated only when commission checks are deposited into the salesperson’s bank account.  With insurance sales, particularl... (more)

SureLC: Licensing and Contracting Demo

I recently recorded a screencast showing SureLC, our software application that automates the Licensing & Contracting process for BGAs, producers, and carriers.  In less than 8 minutes, I show how a BGA can get a newly recruited producer set-up and ready to submit contracting applications to multiple carriers. The whole process is normally completed manually by the producer and BGA, and is error prone.  SureLC automates this process by using a user-friendly interface as well as auto-populating most of the required fields via its NIPR PDB® integration.  In order to get required sig... (more)

Insurance Companies Must Enter the 21st Century

An Accord Technology Survey (AUGIE) conducted in 2006 had 7,500+ insurance producers respond to over 100 questions.  Perhaps the most notable response that insurance companies AND agencies should give credence to is that producers overwhelmingly (97+%) agree that the ease of doing business with a carrier is an increasingly important factor in their decision to place business with the carrier.  As an insurance producer over the past 9 years, I have sold over $1,000,000 of premium providing protection in excess of $375,000,000 of life insurance to over 2,500 families.  In addition,... (more)

Straight Through Processing For New Business

“The days of insurers dictating to agents how they will conduct business are over.  Insurers must meet the demands of agents if they want to grow their business” – CTO of anonymous insurance company Straight-through processing (STP) of new business insurance applications is becoming more attractive for insurance companies and insurance agents as a means to transact business.  If you are unfamiliar with straight-through processing of new business applications, it basically means that the insurance agent can complete an application for his or her client directly on the insurance c... (more)