Prepping for Renewals in the New Year: How Brokers Can Leverage Their Clients’ Data to Appeal to Carriers
Storytelling has long been a part of the insurance renewal process.
Brokers across all lines work with their clients to finesse a narrative about their risk management programs, enabling them to negotiate for the most favorable policy language and premiums. If negotiations with an insured’s incumbent carrier go awry, brokers can use these marketing efforts to help their clients get quotes from other carriers and see if they can get better coverage elsewhere.
As businesses and their brokers prepare for renewal negotiations this year, they should ask themselves: What tells a better story than cold, hard numbers? In today’s data-driven world, carriers want insureds to use metrics like return on investment and claim reduction numbers to prove their risk management efforts are working.
Brokers need to guide their clients to formulate an appealing story detailing how their risk teams are using data-driven metrics to enhance their risk and insurance strategy. This can be achieved by assessing changes in exposure bases, evaluating policy limits, and documenting enhancements in loss control strategy to ultimately articulate the effectiveness of their risk management efforts.
1. Get Policy Information in Order
The first thing brokers need to help their clients do ahead of an insurance renewal is to get their policy information in order. Brokers need to know what kinds of coverage the client currently has and if they’ve experienced a claim in the past year.
Software programs can organize an insured’s policy data, helping brokers visualize the program as a whole and calculate their client’s Total Cost of Risk. AI-driven data ingestion systems, such as LineSlip, remove the need for manual data entry and improve data accuracy.
These tools allow brokers to visualize and assess their client’s insurance programs to identify the major priorities during renewal negotiations. That way, they can better tailor their presentations to carriers to fit their client's needs.
2. Know What Coverage Your Clients Will Need
Once the policy information is in order, brokers need to work with their clients to make sure that their insurance program is cohesive with their risk appetite. Over the past few years, inflation and supply chain issues have led to an increase in claims costs. Last year, insurers saw a $32 billion increase in claims costs compared to historical trends, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
In some cases, these increased costs have resulted in a gap between the insurance coverage a company has purchased and the cost of making the business whole again in the event of a loss. This is particularly true in property lines, where replacement costs have out-paced insurance policy limits.
LineSlip’s True Replacement Cost tool aggregates rebuilding costs from different sources so brokers can evaluate whether or not their clients have adequate property limits. Digital tools can also help brokers and insureds assess shifting risk profiles for various company locations. That way, insureds know whether each and every one of their properties has the coverage it needs ahead of renewal negotiations.
3. Prove the Effectiveness of Risk Management Programs
Knowing how much insurance you need to purchase is just part of the insurance buying process. Once a broker works with their client to understand what coverages and policy terms would coincide with their risk appetite, they need to assess what risk management efforts they’ve put in place over the last year in order to negotiate for better rates, terms, or conditions with their carrier.
Companies should track their risk management efforts to see how particular initiatives have helped reduce the frequency and severity of insurance claims. Workplace safety training, for instance, can help reduce workplace injuries. If an insured has implemented one of these programs, it’s important to use data to demonstrate the program’s effectiveness to carriers.
Data can also help brokers and risk managers evaluate the effects of physical investments. If a company upgrades its properties to withstand higher winds or if they introduce sensor technologies that detect water intrusions, they should be tracking how effective those programs are at mitigating claims and sharing that data with their carriers.
Organizing this data into graphs and charts will make it easy for carriers to visualize the success of these programs. Brokers should work with their clients to create engaging visual aids so that the presentations use data in the most strategic way possible.
Why Data Is Key to Negotiating With Carriers
Technology and data analytics are reshaping the ways brokers can negotiate with carriers on behalf of their clients. Data-driven results will likely be a permanent fixture in renewal negotiations, so it’s important that brokers prepare for them.
LineSlip can help brokers use insurance policy data more effectively to negotiate on their client's behalf. Its tools can help brokers visualize their client’s Total Cost of Risk, location-level costs, and the risks they face as a result of their geographical location.
LineSlip’s product suite can help brokers evaluate their clients’ insurance policies, identify top priorities for negotiations, and assess the success of risk management programs. By using data and analytics to assess risk management programs, brokers can come to the negotiating table with more leverage to secure better rates and policy terms for their clients.