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I first heard of the “balanced scorecard” back when I was in consulting with the “Big 5” (for those of you old enough to remember the “Big 5”). It was being pitched as a best practice for running a business, and we’d be wrapping consulting engagements around this new “tool” for current and prospective clients.
I wasn’t a buyer.
Later...

With lower expenses and more marketing dollars, direct writers have moved in and captured upwards of 30% of the personal insurance market. How can independent agents stay relevant to keep insurance sales healthy and lead the charge in the combat for customers?

As an independent agent, insurance market access is imperative to your business’s success. Whether you’re in need of different market access because you’re looking for more carriers or you need carriers that are more aligned with the goals you’ve set for your agency, you need a partner you can count on. If you’re just coming out of a captive contract, who can you trust to give you the right access to what you want to offer?

When growth at your agency starts to slow, how do you start to turn things around? Training for independent insurance agents can help spark growth by improving and streamlining your processes.

Marketing for insurance agencies might not be the same strategy that you used to know, and your approach might not be as impactful as it was years ago.

If you want to start building a winning agency, you have to have a good understanding of insurance agency financing and how it should have an impact on your business. In order to take your agency to the next step, you’ll likely rely on a lender to help you get there.

eing an independent insurance agent doesn’t come without its challenges. If you don’t have years of experience under your belt already — or know someone who does — you might not know what the right step is to take to help your agency be among the survivors.

Owning part of a large, multi-partner insurance agency has many complexities. Partners must value each other's strengths and recognize the necessity of revenue plus management to increase the value of the agency.

Indium is always seeking ways to help our agency partners expand, compete and grow their business. Our new partnership with Euler Hermes North America adds a unique tool to our product line Indie Agents™ can use to help commercial clients grow sales while mitigating risks.

On down payments, the overarching requirement is cash flow. The purchase price, down payment, and deal structure must result in sufficient cash flow to operate the business, compensate the owner, and repay the loan.

An agency acquisition target typically includes many qualities such as great carrier markets, a quality book of business, strong renewal retention, tenured employees and a nice pace of new business growth.

Requoting can provide a newly licensed CSR/producer a volume of activity right away. They will learn the markets quickly and master the process with repetition and a stack of warm leads. It’s also a way to use workforce capacity that can be easily measured.

Millennials need two things to survive in this fast-paced world: insurance and convenience. So, how do you attract, engage and retain Millennials to your agency? You provide them with what they are looking for—digital resources, the latest technologies and a trusted agent.

For its fourth annual Hot 100 list, Insurance Business America asked the insurance community to nominate major power players who are shaping the future of the industry.

Sometimes “it’s just time.” It’s not money, it’s not health, it’s not family. It’s just time to pass the baton to the next generation of the owner.

In our November carrier blog, Travelers provides information on some of the most popular business placed with commercial lines, new insurance areas of focus and types of business it can write that agencies might not be aware of.

Independent insurance agencies are passionate about helping people with some of their biggest needs at the most critical points in their lives. Because of this, it’s extremely important that we truly listen to understand if we’re serving them well.

In the October edition of our carrier blog, American Modern Senior Territory Sales Manager, Rick Reynolds, provides information on the launch of American Modern's new software solution (AMSuite) and provides examples of both signature products and unique coverages that American Modern can help its clients write.

Social media is a powerful relationship-marketing tool. It provides an avenue for independent insurance agents to listen to their customers and address their needs. Indie Agents use it to build rapport, strengthen relationships, and humanize themselves in a way that can shift customer perception from agent to friend.

Customers talk to their friends and family every day about their favorite restaurant, what they love about their insurance agency or why they’ve had a bad experience at their doctor visit. What are they saying about you? More than ever, we need to LISTEN to what they are saying about our companies, our service levels, and our brand, and we need to CARE.

In the July edition of our blog, Senior Account Manager Melissa McCormick, describes the benefits of using our new business submission technology (Appulate), details the habits of our most successful agency partners and offers tips on how to submit business to Indium.

As business owners, we know there are countless metrics and measures that we can look at to get a feel for how our business is performing. For most of us, our tendency is to fixate on our financial results (of course, why wouldn't we?). While financial results are certainly critical to knowing the health of our business, financials are also largely backward looking. At Indium we focus on a different metric to understand how we are doing and if we can expect growth: our Net Promoter Score.

Appulate is an industry leading new business submission platform that will make it easier for you, Indium and our company partners to do business together. Appulate reduces keystrokes, validates each submission for completeness and speeds up turn-around time, allowing you and our partner companies to collaborate more efficiently through Indium.

In our quest to identify a new and relevant name, we discovered that Indium is the 49th element on the periodic chart. And as we learned more about this element, its qualities, characteristics and how it interacts with other metals, we learned that “Indium” is very reflective of our company’s mission, purpose and what differentiates us in the marketplace.

In this month's blog post, Indium CEO Chad Eddy describes what it means to be a "market access provider", and why we are not like the others.