Relationships Matter: myCOI Offers Value-Added Services for Agency Clients

Businesses trust their insurance agent to keep them covered, often without fully understanding their policies. Many take a “worry later” approach. Now with a global pandemic turning the business world upside down, people are anxious, confused, and looking for help. This presents an opportunity for agents to step up for clients in a major way. By modifying their service strategy with myCOI, agents can use this time to make the best of a very difficult situation.

Strengthening Client Risk Strategies

As companies navigate COVID-19 uncertainties, minimizing other controllable risks becomes more important. Using previous recessions as a guide, insurance policy cancellations and lapses will increase in the coming months. Once the US reopens for business, underinsured and fraudulent claims will be on the rise. With clients already reeling from the COVID-19 economic downturn, a preventable third-party claim could prove financially devastating. Agents who help clients prevent these risks now are extremely valuable. With claims up and investments down currently, insurance companies financially need high customer retention.

myCOI helps manage client risk with:

• Certificate of insurance (COI) and endorsement tracking – myCOI captures all required vendor insurance documents. The system reviews the paperwork for expirations and errors. Non-compliance generates immediate action alerts so agents or the client’s team can resolve problems before they turn into preventable losses.
• Insurance rating monitoring – financial solvency is becoming a major issue among insurance companies. myCOI checks the insurer’s rating when documents get uploaded. For clients working with hundreds of vendors each with a different insurance provider, this makes credit monitoring easy.
• Compliance reviews – many companies do not track their overall vendor compliance score. myCOI corrects this problem with a dashboard providing an overall risk assessment and compliance percentage. This offers agents a benchmark for improving a client’s risk management practices. Every increase to the score helps prevent the client from contributing to the more than $250 billion in commercial and general liability payouts annually.

Helping Clients Work Smarter

COVID-19 has every business doing more with less. Internal risk management teams already tend to run lean. Agents can offer additional value by helping clients operate more efficiently. myCOI enables agents to operate as an extension of the client’s team, places the agent’s name and logo in front of the client with system white-labeling, and delivers automation for making risk management easier and more effective.

myCOI streamlines loss prevention by:

• Automating vendor communication – save clients the countless emails and phone calls needed to track down vendor insurance documents. myCOI issues automated communications for certificate requests, renewals, and non-compliance alerts. Vendors and insurance agents can upload documents directly into the portal using an email link. The client’s team now has the capacity to address the biggest risk problems rather than wasting time playing phone tag.
• Eliminating manual work – spreadsheets commonly serve as insurance compliance trackers, which always are out of date and error prone. Using them for real-time reporting is nearly impossible. myCOI stores all certificates digitally and offers a personalized dynamic dashboard with actionable data. The system eliminates the need for paper copies and clunky spreadsheets. When claims do arise, all documents are centralized, so the client knows they are covered.

Lowering Client Costs

Companies always care about the bottom line, but finances are especially tight right now. Agents can save clients money over time without compromising service or coverage by delivering a better risk management process. When clients can easily rate shop, delivering long-term savings is an important selling point for customer loyalty.

myCOI strengthens companies financially by:

• Reducing loss events – tracking COIs and endorsements lowers the likelihood of uninsured and underinsured vendor claims. When compliance increases and loss histories remain low, underwriters can maintain or lower premiums. This can generate thousands of dollars in insurance savings. Less losses also preserves claim reserves and avoids costly litigation.
• Tying cash to compliance – there is a saying that “money talks” and that applies well to vendor compliance. myCOI integrates with most major accounting programs so that payments can be withheld from non-compliant vendors until the issue is corrected. This simple safeguard enforces contract requirements and prompts quick compliance resolutions.  

How an agency supports and stands up for their customers during this pandemic will forge a lasting impression long into the future. While nearly 60% of customers may go from year to year without the need for in-depth interactions with an agent under usual circumstances, these times are anything but normal. EY’s Global Consumer Insurance Survey found that when insurers and customers connected, 70% of the interactions generated a positive outcome. Relationships matter. Consider how myCOI can build a better connection between your agency and its clients. Engagement creates opportunity – during this pandemic and long after.

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