Insurance agencies and brokerages focus much of their efforts on policies — selling and renewing them. However, it’s still a business and there’s a lot of paperwork and administrative tasks that go into keeping the lights on. It makes sense an agency might outsource tasks, including commission management, to focus their resources back on policies. This is what Core Commissions offers through our Managed Services program.
When an insurance agency outsources commission management, they can focus on covering their customers with the best policies.
When an insurance agency seeks out someone to manage commissions, it needs to find one that knows how insurance commissions work. The company should be reliable, efficient, and easy to work with.
Of course once an agency outsources the task of insurance commissions, that doesn’t mean they can wash their hands of it. Agencies and brokerages still need to stay on top of commission management — even if they’re doing it remotely.
At Core Commissions, we’ve been helping insurance agencies and brokerages manage commissions for years. We’ve learned a thing or two about it during this time. To help insurance agencies and brokerages navigate the task of outsourcing insurance commissions, we’ve laid out a few rules to follow. Scroll down to find out what you need to expect from a commission management business and what the agency needs to do to keep them on track.
Find a Team with Experience in Insurance Commissions
As any insurance agency knows, insurance commissions are a beast like no other. The mess of commission statements that floods in each cycle come in a variety of formats, from paper statements to PDFs to other file formats. In order to juggle and process all of those statements — and understand them — the outsourced company needs to know their way around an insurance commission statement.
When evaluating companies, it’s wise to ask them about their experience with insurance commissions. Get a rundown on the process they use to efficiently and accurately process the statements as well. Perhaps they can run a demo for you to show you their operations firsthand. It will help you determine if this is the right company to take over commissions for your team.
Make Sure That Team Offers Reliable Service
Once you feel certain the company can handle insurance commissions, you’ll want to make sure they’re also reliable. You’ll want an organization that can provide you with a dedicated point of contact. This should be someone who can quickly and immediately respond to you if any issues or errors come up.
In the process of selecting the company, be sure that you ask about how you can submit issues and who will handle them. Find out how many hours of training and set up you’ll be afforded. This will give you a sense of how much time the company means to invest in their customers.
Understand the Software and Applications Used
Any company offering to manage commissions should be working with powerful and flexible tools. They should have something more advanced than Excel at their fingertips in order to provide efficient but error-free commission calculations.
At the onset of negotiations, ensure that you can get a look at their technology. There may be times that your own in-house team may need to use the tools so they should also be intuitive. Look for a team with deep familiarity and expertise when it comes to the applications they use.
You’ll also want access to the tools yourself and the ability to make plan changes or adjustments as needed. When you have to rely on the service to make changes for you, it will take extra time and cost more money.
Have Them Prove They Can Handle It
A commission management service should be able to prove they are worth the investment. Receiving a thorough demo may help you determine this. At Core Commissions, we offer Quick Start. The program gives your team 10 hours of set up and training as well as 30-days use on the system without additional commitment. This will give you the experience you need to make an informed decision.
Provide Assets and Information to the Company in a Timely Manner
Turning insurance commission management over to another party takes a lot of the pressure off your team. However, it’s important to keep in touch with your contacts and ensure they have everything they need. You need to take responsibility in ensuring that commissions are still paid out every commission cycle with as few errors as possible.
We’d be happy to work with you and your insurance agency or brokerage to manage all your commissions tasks. Contact us for more info or schedule a free demo with us. We’ll show you how it all works.