The Arizona President’s Advisory Council for SECURA Insurance met Nov. 4 via Zoom.
Agent Representatives
Dan Scott, Frontier Insurance Concepts; Damon Breinholt, Breinholt & Associates; Michael Gates, Gates Insurance Inc.; Milo LeBaron, LeBaron & Carroll, LLC; JB Shockey; Crest Insurance Group, LLC; Marty Uhlhorn, Strong Tower Insurance Group
SECURA Representatives
Dave Gross, President & CEO; Larry Wright, Vice President and Chief Claims Officer; Marty Arnold, SVP and Chief Underwriting Officer; Tim Heyroth, Vice President and Chief Sales Officer; Amy DeHart Vice President and Chief Actuarial Officer; Brett Purcell, Regional Sales Director
We kicked off our meeting with showing the updated brand video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMeS5GfOyoE&feature=emb_logo
Watch the video below for an overview and SECURA updates.
Click the links below to navigate to the comment/response section for each topic.
Personal Lines | Commercial Lines | Specialty Lines | Risk Management | Claims | Miscellaneous
Personal Lines
(Agent comments with SECURA responses)
1. Comment: Your Gold product is great.
Response: We appreciate your feedback. We continue to invest in new coverages for the MILE-STONE product. For example, in January, Arizona will have a new endorsement available: buy back of cosmetic loss damage caused by hail to metal roofs.
2. Comment: Due to pricing you need perks – like accident forgiveness.
Response: Accident forgiveness was rolled out several years ago as an automatic added feature to all MILE-STONE policies. We see quite a few varieties by carrier of this feature, and we’ll review how we can make this even more beneficial as we refresh our rating plan. We agree with the point that our product and its enhancements need to overcome some challenges with pricing.
3. Comment: What are your plans for pricing/rate for personal lines in Arizona?
Response: The Arizona January 2021 rate change will be in your system late November reflecting a modest +3.4% increase broken down as +2.8% in auto and +5.0% in home. We are seeing more consistent results in policy retention and improving profitability. The auto liability lines perform worse than physical damage, and homeowners loss trends remain a challenge primarily due to much higher non-weather water damage losses. The 3.4% rate change is smaller than past years and reflects our long term desire to profitably grow in Arizona.
4. Comment: You haven’t found your sweet spot? Territory or model? Not in top 5. Results due to Water, UM/UIM?
Response: We continue to target the package home and auto customer. Some territory modifications are being made with the January 2021 rate change to ensure we’re tracking the correct communities for competitiveness. More rate is being taken in home due to high non-weather water damage losses.
5. Comment: We would like capability of pulling a credit score earlier.
Response: Quotes started in MILE-STONE Link automatically activate the actual order of Insurance Scores; whereas, in some agencies, a default score is used when a quote begins in a real-time rater. For those agencies using real-time raters and have a default score activated, we recently improved the default value to reflect the overall upward trend in insurance scores over the past few years. Once the business is on the books, agents always have the ability to refresh the rated insurance score using the MILE-STONE Link endorsement transaction. It’s the agency’s choice whether to upload and apply the most recent insurance score.
Specialty Lines
(Agent comments with SECURA responses)
1. Comment: Special Events in BizLink works very well.
Response: Thank you, we are excited that agents have the opportunity to quote Special Events in Bizlink. We offer other classes as well, such as sports camps and leagues. We will be looking for ways to expand our BizLink product into the future!
2. Comment: Nonprofit results? Performing pretty well – but some are struggling. Extra/additional exposure.
Response: Our NFP results have been very favorable in terms of growth and profit. Although –COVID-19 has affected them, we are still writing more and more on a regular basis. I should also add that we have enhanced our coverage offerings on this class by now using our Elite WRAP on the General Liability line of business. Also, in the very near future we are going to be enhancing our Human Service Property WRAP as well. Therefore, in 2021 we are looking to be your go-to carrier for this class of business!
Commercial Lines
(Agent comments with SECURA responses)
1. Comment: Your turnaround time is delayed (on new business) – slower/renewals are better. You are missing need by dates.
Response: Thank you for the feedback. Generally speaking, our underwriters have been able to adjust to the unpredictable challenges we have faced in 2020. Our service standards have remained high, and we have outperformed our 2020 goals for which we are extremely grateful for your continued confidence in us. With this, we realize that some accounts may slip through as our underwriters balance their workloads and emails. Please reach out to your underwriter or sales manager to discuss any specific concerns.
2. Comment: Underwriters need to be well versed on BizLink.
Response: We agree! Our underwriters have been involved in numerous training sessions to learn the system and the workflows, but there will be instances where the underwriter may not have all of the answers. In addition to our underwriters, our agency automation team, sales managers, and internal sales managers are able to assist.
3. Comment: There are too many “lock outs” when using BizLink.
Response: We appreciate this feedback and will share with our developers to continue to create better ease of use.
4. Comment: BizLink has too many screens. You need to consolidate.
Response: We realize that BizLink is a more robust underwriting system than our former eRater platform. Overall the initial feedback has been really good, but it will take some time for all of our agency partners to get comfortable with it.
5. Comment: When will BizLink be expanded to retail classes?
Response: We are currently working on BizLink Release 3 which includes the addition of retail, office and service BOP classes to the existing Target Contractor classes. We are also working on some user experience enhancements based on direct feedback from our agency partners and also straight through processing for some Specialty Lines classes. In addition, the team will continue to address feedback concerns and suggestions and implement changes/updates accordingly.
6. Comment: What are your thoughts on a Service Center?
Response: We’ve approved the concept of a Commercial Lines Service Center and are in the early planning stages. We plan on rolling out in a crawl, walk, run method starting with about four staff members and a very small group of agencies. The addition of Specialty Lines in that model is under consideration.
Our main objective is to have flexible, thorough, knowledgeable staff members who can provide our policyholders with excellent customer service and maintain open communication with our agents. Our rollout would start with commercial classes, account size $10,000 and under. We’re aiming to provide full service including endorsements, certificate of insurance, renewals, upselling/cross-selling and all other insured inquiries. We do not have an estimated live date established at this time, but are working on resource allocation and project mobilization in early 2021.
7. Comment: Have you seen a cyber claim uptick? Has work from home security affected this? (rollout of our product in April)
Response: We have not seen an increase in cyber claim activity but are monitoring trends, including claim counts, during the pandemic.
8. Comment: What are your Umbrella pricing thoughts? It could be opportunity for you. (National player knee jerk reaction) (plan is 5% varying by account) Underwrite carefully, but it has been profitable.
Response: We appreciate the feedback. We do monitor what we are seeing in the market and are always looking for new opportunities. Please reach out to your underwriter or sales manager to discuss any specific accounts.
9. Comment: Are you looking at pay as you go Work Comp?
Response: We are continuing to monitor what we are seeing in the market and understand the need to offer this coverage for certain classes of business. We have been focusing our resources on other projects such as BizLink and Cyber Liability, but will continue to look into options for a Work Comp pay as you go solution.
Risk Management
(Agent comments with SECURA responses)
1. Comment: This is a great resource.
Response: Thank you for saying so!
2. Comment: What is your protocol for in-person visits?
Response: Our strategy puts the personal safety of our Risk Managers, you, and your policyholders first. If anyone feels uncomfortable with an in-person visit, we accomplish a phone survey and in some instances ask the policyholder to forward photos/documentation to us. We also review the online resources available to the policyholder with them. If an in-person visit does occur, the Risk Manager will be wearing PPE, maintaining social distancing, and keep a contact tracing log in the event an illness occurs after the visit. Currently, there is no timeframe as to when we will be able to stop operating like this.
3. Comment: Jason does a great job – looks for ways to help.
Response: Thank you for noticing! We know that Jason goes above and beyond for you and your policyholders.
4. Comment: Auto experience – consulting capability (you need to advertise this more)
Response: All of SECURA Risk Managers are considered generalists, but most have extensive experience and knowledge in specific areas. While we do not advertise those, we stand at the ready to assist you and your insureds on any topic that may arise.
5. Comment: Is SECURA considering partnerships with vendors that would provide potential cost savings for agencies and insureds?
Response: We appreciate you bringing this up since we have researched many different products and vendors in the past. We have also determined that due to the diversity in the types of businesses we insure as well as overall insured interest, it is not feasible for us to create those partnerships at this time. We do revisit this topic on a regular basis.
Claims
(Agent comments with SECURA responses)
1. Comment: All good – no complaints.
Response: Great to hear that you are not currently having any claims issues.
2. Comment: We have a third-party outsourcing issue.
Response: We will follow up with you on this issue as we want to better understand the concern.
Miscellaneous
(Agent comments with SECURA responses)
1. Comment: SECURA’s communication was great – not too much through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Response: Thank you for this feedback. We focus our communication to make sure you get the information you need while not sending too many messages. You can confirm whether you or others from your agency are set up to receive SECURA emails in AgentLink under My Agency > Agency Information > Email Addresses
2. Comment: We are seeing a lot of webinars and Zoom – in a good way, especially if they offer CE. You do you great job with training.
Response: Thank you for the comment; I am so excited to hear that our webinars are well liked by our agents. We do plan on scheduling more webinars in 2021, so check AgentLink to see the line-up. If there is anything we can do to make our CE training even better, please reach out to Angela Kain, Manager of Agency Training, at akain@secura.net.
3. Comment: We are interested in an extensive new agent program. (Failure rates of new producers). Have you thought to align with Big I and/or CIC with classes?
Response: We have a really great new producer live webinar program that runs for 12 weeks. We offer this program twice per year. For more information, please talk to your sales manager, Shannon. Aligning with the Big I and/or CIC is not something that we have considered in the past, but we will discuss it. Thank you for the suggestion.