Tag: EZLynx Management System

Top 10 Tips for Personal Lines Retention

Posted on by EZLynx

It’s no secret that successful agencies make retention a priority. They know that keeping a customer is much more profitable than going out to find a new one.

Here are 10 helpful tips to keep your agency focused and winning at renewal time.

  1. Have a Retention process. 
    This one may seem obvious, but it really does start here.

    Repeatable success won’t happen without a plan. Document a process and embrace it the same way you would any critical procedure within your agency.

  2. Work your Retention process daily.
    Retention should be a daily habit. Each member of the team should have an assigned role and a list of goals to achieve each day.
  3. Be proactive, not reactive.
    Know what’s happening with your client’s policy before the carrier sends the renewal notice. Then, communicate (quickly).

    Once clients receive their new rates from the carrier, they’re already shopping (without you). That means you need to touch 100% of your clients before the carrier.

    To stay ahead of the game, make sure renewals are downloading to your agency management system.

  4. Know when a client is at risk.
    Renewing clients should be managed in two categories—those at risk and those that aren’t.  (This may seem easier said than done, but technology can really help out in this area.)

    You’re going to touch both groups, but prioritize the communication.

    For at-risk clients, you’ll want to evaluate their policy first. If you recognize their renewal is out of line with the market, communicate that. Let them know better options are available and reassure them that you’re already working on it.

    For clients in a better spot, you’ll want to communicate that you’ve proactively reviewed their renewal. All is in order and in line with the current market, but you’re available for any additional consultation.

  5. Be ready to explain why the client’s premium increased.
    An on-screen comparison of the current and renewing policies is the quickest way to accomplish this. If there is an obvious reason for the rate increase (new car, coverage changes, etc.), viewing them side-by-side will quickly discover it.
  6. Be ready to provide multiple quotes.
    Customers want to feel like they have explored their options. By providing multiple quotes, you’re easing their minds and making them feel better about doing business with you.
  7. Know when to remarket, and when to educate.
    As retention becomes a daily priority, your agency will gain a feel for when it is appropriate to remarket your insureds.

    What does the client value? How big was the impact of the state rate change? What’s happening in the carrier market, or with the product offering?

    Educate your clients on current market conditions so you remain their trusted advisor.

  8. Stay in touch… not just at renewal time.
    Having a regular communication cadence will keep you top of mind all year round. Find reasons to reach out and add value to your clients’ lives.

    Account reviews are great opportunities to re-evaluate clients’ needs and reinforce your value.

  9. Cross-selling keeps customers.
    Rounding out accounts is a sure-fire way to strengthen them for the long term. Is the client bundled for home and auto? Does your agency offer Life and Health?
  10. Be unique in your community.
    You know why customers trust you to insure their risks, so make sure that value comes through at renewal time.

    Do you give back to the community through charitable work or volunteerism? Do you serve a particular demographic? What types of online services do you provide? Do clients have access to their policies online 24/7?

    This is the time to promote your brand and show customers that you care.

Final Thoughts

Always remember, agency retention doesn’t happen by accident. It’s something you must work toward constantly to be successful. With the right plan and practices, retention can become the cornerstone of your business and its long-term growth.

If some of these best practices seem daunting, it may be because your agency isn’t using all the technology available today. EZLynx can help with that. From Rating Engine to Management System, Communication Center, and the patented Retention Center, EZLynx has the tools you need to intelligently streamline the entire customer renewal process.

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Enable Multi-Factor Authentication for Your Agency Today

Posted on by EZLynx

With phishing and other password-theft scams on the rise, safeguarding your agency’s data has never been more important.

Of course, EZLynx continues to aggressively ensure that our system is secure. Cloud-based agency management systems minimize many of your operational risks by offloading your critical infrastructure, removing physical storage needs, and enhancing security.

But in the end, all it takes is a simple username and password for someone (hopefully you) to access all of your client data in our system.

That is why multi-factor authentication is so important, and we are encouraging you to enable this feature on your account, as it will soon be required for all EZLynx accounts.

What is multi-factor authentication?

You may have heard of this before, and you likely have already experienced it at your banking website. To put it simply, multi-factor (or two-factor, two-step, etc.) authentication ensures that just because someone has your password, they still cannot access your account until they complete another step to prove their identity.  They must also have access to a second means of authentication, usually in the form of your physical mobile phone, which most likely is never far away from your hand!

Enabling multi-factor authentication is easy.

If you’re an EZLynx Rating Engine or Management System customer, you already have multi-factor authentication available to you!  It just needs to be enabled.

EZLynx Multi-Factor Authentication supports sending a verification code to your email address or as a text message to your phone.  We recommend that you choose the Text Message option as the most secure and reliable method.

You can learn how to get started here.

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Clearing a Path Toward Productivity with Commercial Schedule Imports & Exports

Posted on by EZLynx

 

Accomplishing more, in a reduced amount of time, is crucial for commercial agents. It is not a simple task to quantify how changes to an agency’s workflow will improve overall productivity. To effectively make these changes requires a delicate understanding of a commercial agent’s needs. That’s why EZLynx is making extensive updates to the EZLynx import/export process, which will clear the way for agencies to accomplish more, faster.

Speed and accuracy are key in clearing a path to an agency’s ability to manage commercial accounts. Without one or the other, an agency is left with errors or stands unable to meet client needs in a timely manner. Importing information will aid agents in gathering and entering data into EZLynx quickly, with fewer entry mistakes. The next update will allow agents to import schedules for commercial line applications and policies, including vehicles, drivers, locations/buildings, named insureds, additional interests, and equipment.

Import Vehicles

This workflow allows agents to ‘Add New’ or ‘Replace All’ when remarketing or during any other major update. This feature will save agents time when working on applications or servicing a policy.

Append on Import

The ability for commercial clients to self-service their accounts is critical to an agency’s ability to exceed customer expectations. With the new update, agents will have the ability to export one or more schedules from applications and policies and automatically share those exports with an insured or a prospect. Then, the insured or the prospect will have the ability to make updates through EZLynx Client Center. This will help agents sell more by allowing the prospect to see the seamless and secure communication between Client Center and the agent. Existing clients will have additional options for communicating with their agents.

Share in Client Center

As laid out in the 2019 Roadmap, increasing innovation and productivity for commercial agencies is a major focus for EZLynx. Import capabilities are only the first step toward streamlining the workflow for commercial agents. Over the proceeding months, new product updates will continue to pave the way for commercial agencies to improve their overall productivity. Just another way EZLynx helps agents ACCOMPLISH MORE, FASTER.

To learn more about EZLynx or to find out how your agency can use EZLynx Management System with your Commercial Lines business, contact us below.

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Improved Productivity with Agency Workspace

Posted on by EZLynx

You may have noticed that we often talk about productivity. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself what productivity truly means for your agency? EZLynx knows how increased productivity can improve your bottom line, and we provide agents with the tools they need to be efficient.

Productivity is the completion of a high volume of tasks, while efficiency refers to how well you use your resources to complete this high volume of tasks in a reasonable amount of time. The two concepts work as two sides of the same coin— to be truly productive, businesses need to maintain a high level of efficiency. Businesses have long recognized two foundational ways to increase productivity: streamline the process and leverage technology. In recent years, researchers identified collaboration as one of the driving forces behind productivity.

Simply working toward common goals with greater transparency helps motivate people to overcome challenges. Today, agencies are recognizing this function and working to improve productivity by changing their company culture, optimizing the work process, and adding technology as an aid.

Culture

Building a new culture in the workplace begins by improving the collaborative abilities of each employee. When the proper culture is implemented in an organization, productivity naturally increases as everyone works efficiently to accomplish goals with teams and individuals alike receiving rewards as they are accomplished. Creating this culture does not happen overnight, but through a long-term commitment to a company mission.

Though teamwork is key, a team cannot work together without having a designated space and process through which to accomplish each goal, such as Agency Workspace.

Process

Setting up the proper workflows is the catalyst to increasing your agency’s productivity. Without a defined process, collaboration efforts suffer, but identifying the proper method to accomplish each task as a team can be tricky. Employees need to know what work is completed, what needs to be completed, and who is assigned to each task. This is simple with Agency Workspace. For insurance agents, having a defined process can be crucial to avoiding potential E&O exposure.

We have seen tremendous success for agencies that standardize titles on discussion groupings, label actions, add policy associations, and check accomplished items off of a pre-defined list to ensure that nothing is missed. In addition to these needs, the process needs to be simple enough for group collaboration, while also being thorough enough to protect against mistakes.

Technology

While researchers and business experts often provide recommendations related to improving your workflow and adding additional technology in your office, how these solutions will maximize productivity is often a missing link in this equation. Technology should work as a vessel to improve your agency’s productivity. For an insurance agent, this means having a space designed for agents that helps protect agencies against E&O exposure while also allowing the agents to have access to immediate answers when an insured calls.

Recognizing the interwoven role technology, process, and collaboration play in increasing productivity, EZLynx built the Agency Workspace with the unique needs of an agency in mind. Features like the ability to take a note or work a task are available from anywhere in the system, helping agents handle frequent interruptions without losing their place. Notes and tasks are grouped into logical discussions so anyone in the agency can quickly get up to speed on a specific topic for an insured. Creating agency specific labels help track and quickly identify common activities across the organization. For agencies following standardized procedures, creating checklists is a great way to ensure everyone is following the same steps every time.

EZLynx recognizes that technology is not a magic bullet to improve the productivity of your company. Agency Workspace, which is part of EZLynx Management System, provides agents with the tools and framework necessary to create a process that works to allow agencies to maximize efficiency. Utilizing Agency Workspace can substantially improve the collaborative capabilities of your agency, helping you ACCOMPLISH MORE, Faster.

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EZLynx Roadmap for 2019

Posted on by Brenna Johnson

2018 was a year of growth for EZLynx and especially for our agencies! Agencies using EZLynx have on average enjoyed substantial year-over-year increases in customers, policies, and premiums. While agents saw growth in all areas, this trend was especially pronounced for commercial lines. We take pride as a partner in your success and want to continue to provide the tools you need to thrive and grow each year.

We all work towards Nag’s vision of a single platform customer lifecycle solution built on the pillars of productivity, serviceability, profitability and scalability for your agency. We believe that scalability is achieved by aligning the right people, processes, and technology to overcome plateaus that inhibit growth. We want to thank our customers who also believe in and support our vision as we strive to improve our industry.

We faced challenges with our own scalability this year, which is why we made the difficult decision to hold off on some important new features while we focused on the system architecture and stability of the platform. For many years, EZLynx was known in the industry for its reliability, so we look forward to earning back your trust in that area. To continue our growth, we’ve put the people, processes, and technology in place to continue delivering innovative solutions to support your business while we grow ours. The way we see it, working as a trusted technology partner with your best interest in mind is the only way we both win.

Looking Back at 2018

EZLynx introduced exciting products and a series of targeted features that significantly impact the amount of time agencies spend on non-revenue generating activities. Features such as bulk document enhancements, updates to EZLynx for Outlook, improved download matching, additional LOB support, eSignature custom fields, MSB residential pre-fill with reconstruction cost valuation, and a completely new commission import workflow are all updates that were aimed at reducing man-hours spent on these necessary activities. The team is testing several other productivity features including an updated forms workflow, which saves time generating the application documents and will be available for general release early 2019!

We officially introduced Automation Center this summer to set the foundation for the future of our platform. Automation Center helps agencies scale by handling many of the repetitive tasks that consume resources and keep you from focusing on high-value activities. This type of automation also encourages everyone to adhere to standard workflows and promotes best practices. It is the foundation for helping you increase productivity and serviceability without adding staff. We will continue to enhance the automation features in 2019 with support for multi-step and conditional workflows.

One of the most exciting products designed to help agencies scale while increasing profitability is our Agency Insights™ for Sales Center. This feature automatically generates potential prospects from your quote data and book of business, giving you the information needed to recapture, win, and cross-sell opportunities before the X-Date. This is the type of feature that pushes the boundaries on what a management system should do for an agency.

Looking Forward in 2019

We want to provide commercial lines sales and service the same innovation and productivity gains that EZLynx brought to personal lines. We’ve set an ambitious roadmap for 2019 with a few surprises along the way! The roadmap focuses on the business problems that commercial agents have faced for years in the areas of submission management, certificate distribution, and ongoing servicing.

At AgentLynx 2018, we showed off a sneak peek of EZLynx 5, the next generation of the EZLynx platform, and we are excited to announce that it will be available later this year! EZLynx 5 is designed to move us toward our vision of a smart Rating Engine and Agency Management System that helps drive an agency through automation and improved consistency, functionality, and usability.

Recently we’ve noticed an increase in the consolidation of independent agencies under MAPs, or Market Access Providers. In late 2018, we started building EZLynx for MAPs, a product designed to help these organizations overcome common plateaus, scale quickly, and increase the efficiency of their operations. Our initial roadmap addresses member management, carrier management, and commissions processing.

As a company, we push ourselves to never settle and look for opportunities to affect positive change in the insurance industry. Even as the leader in personal lines rating, we believe there is room for improvement. This year we are thrilled to show some love for the EZLynx Rating Engine with the goal of improving speed and accuracy to help you accomplish more, faster!

AgentLynx 2019

A special thank you to everyone who joined us for AgentLynx last year in San Diego. We truly enjoyed getting to meet everyone and sharing our passion for new technology. With every AgentLynx we hope to inspire attendees to leverage EZLynx to drive productivity, serviceability, scalability, and profitability in their own agencies.

Our user conference is a unique opportunity for you to learn how to maximize your potential with EZLynx and to influence the direction of the product for the future. Several of the product enhancements of 2018 were a direct result of feedback from the conference! We are already working toward new surprises for AgentLynx 2019. We look forward to seeing you all in Fort Worth, Texas on October 20-23rd.

We are excited for the new year and the opportunities it brings to continue our journey as your technology partner!

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Provide Five-Star Customer Service with EZLynx Client Center

Posted on by EZLynx

As technology becomes increasingly important for conducting business, it is no surprise that the insurance industry has become more digital. Still, according to a recent Forbes article, only 15 percent of insureds report being satisfied with their insurer’s digital experience, leaving agents with the opportunity to easily set themselves apart from the competition by providing a more positive technology experience.

Self-Service Anywhere

Recognizing these business trends, EZLynx provides for your needs as an agent as well as your client’s requests. By working as an online portal for customers to make secure requests and view other important documents, EZLynx Client Center works as a 24/7/365 digital customer service representative, putting your agency in the position to exceed customer expectations.

Five-Star Customer Service

EZLynx Client Center gives your clients the control and the digital communications capabilities they want from their insurance agent. With Client Center, your insureds can access their policy, submit change requests, and view their ID cards from anywhere, even the side of the road. As an agent, share confidential documents for your customers to print without security concerns.

Client Center will also save you and your commercial clients valuable time. Using templates set up by administrators in your agency, insureds are able to add interest holders and self-generate Certificates of Insurance without changing any other policy information. Through the power of ONE PLATFORM, you will receive a notification of the new certificate holder by email and in EZLynx Management System, and your insureds will receive the documentation they need, when they need it.

Additionally, your insureds can request policy changes, update contact information and view policies through Client Center. You will receive a notification of all change requests in EZLynx, allowing you to service your accounts, faster.

All of the actions in Client Center will be logged automatically in EZLynx Management System. This seamless digital platform will reduce your E&O exposure and allow your agents to quickly understand a request or question when a client directly contacts the office, allowing your agency to provide an improved omnichannel customer service experience.

Coming in October

A new enhancement to EZLynx Client Center will allow your agency to provide a preview of your digital capabilities during the sales process by allowing you to share secure documents and communications with prospects.

Enhance your Customer Experience

Client Center does not replace all of your interactions with your clients, rather, it makes your interactions more efficient. As an agent, you will be able to focus your attention on being hands on with your customers when needed or giving customers the ability to self-service their accounts when possible. With EZLynx Client Center, make a lasting first impression, improve customer service, and exceed expectations.

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ONE PLATFORM for your Agency Needs

Posted on by EZLynx

A lot has changed with EZLynx Management System over the past several years. As your business grows, so do your business needs. Our platform is specifically designed to grow with you to help meet those unique challenges you face. The ability to track premiums, improve your customer service capabilities, and reduce E&O exposure becomes increasingly critical to your success. With these needs in mind, it is surprising that 20 percent of insurance agencies admit to not using a management system, according to the IIABA 2016 Agency Universe Study.

With EZLynx Management System, you will find everything you need to run your business on ONE PLATFORM. Unlike other management systems, EZLynx allows you to keep all of your data in one place, so managing new applications, quoting, creating proposals, and filling in ACORD forms and certificates can be completed without entering new information into a series of other applications, which will increase your overall productivity and accuracy.

Manage Sales

The benefit of keeping all of your information on ONE PLATFORM is immediately evident in the sales process. Whether using the manual application entry or EZLynx Rating Engine, agents can collect risk information on personal and commercial prospects. Once entered, all of the information flows seamlessly into ACORD forms and Agency Forms to send to the carriers. All quotes, manual and real-time, are stored with the prospect’s information to allow you to easily see the best fit and generate a proposal. Throughout the process, agents can securely manage documents and generate forms, such as ID cards or binders, all within EZLynx.

Policy Issue and Servicing

When a prospect becomes an insured, EZLynx Management System will simplify your management responsibilities and your agency’s communications. EZLynx Management System allows you to manage your download and manual policies. If a carrier requires manual entry, the information that you already entered into the application will flow into the policy, saving you time. EZLynx even tracks the status of your policies to provide a quick indication of whether a policy is in force or not. Commission tools will simplify your tracking and payment management, providing you with the information you need to understand your business.

Endorsement processing and certificate generation are time consuming processes for agencies. If a client requests a policy change, EZLynx streamlines the change request process, allowing agents to request, monitor, and verify policy changes with the carrier. To further your customer service capabilities and improve your efficiency, EZLynx expedites your commercial certificate generation process by allowing you to generate certificates within minutes and securely send them to your clients.

Our system will increase the speed and accuracy of your agency’s claims tracking process with downloaded and manual claim support by allowing you to automatically download and keep your agents up to date on the claims process.

Customer Self-Service

For agents with EZLynx Client Center, you can allow your clients to view a summary of their policy and their ID cards. Information presented in Client Center is pulled from EZLynx Management System automatically, so you know your client has the most up to date information. Commercial clients even have the ability to self-generate certificates.

Agency Productivity

EZLynx Management system has several tools focused on increasing agency productivity and collaboration. Agency Workspace within EZLynx Management System will allow you to manage your reminders, notes, and tasks that you depend on to run your agency. Access to the workspace is available throughout EZLynx, so that you can add notes, tasks, and reminders and view notifications without having to navigate away from a page. Add attachments and labels to keep your data organized and multi-task and collaborate with your coworkers, so that you can maximize your team’s potential. Use EZLynx Automation Center to program the automatic creation of tasks based on activities happening in your agency and actions completed by insureds, such as the completion of an eSignature document.

Intelligent Business Analytics

EZLynx Agency Pulse puts the power of ONE PLATFORM to work by combining metrics from your EZLynx Rating Engine and EZLynx Management System. With Agency Pulse in EZLynx Management System, agency owners will receive a snapshot of your agency’s health and be able to evaluate key performance indicators with an automated email report, giving you the ability to pinpoint areas that need improvement. EZLynx provides a robust list of reports and dashboards to help you gain an understanding of your book of business, carrier distribution, productivity, and more. EZLynx Management System will help you grow your book of business by helping you understand your data and where to take action to see improvement.

Growth Opportunities

Do not allow tedious tasks to hold you back from growing your business and leave you in a place of E&O exposure. Use a management system that will grow with you. While EZLynx uses the power of ONE PLATFORM, EZLynx Management System does not force your agency into a one-size-fits-all structure. Additional EZLynx products such as EZLynx Retention Center and EZLynx Sales Center can be enabled seamlessly, allowing you to expand your capabilities within the management system as your business needs grow. Use EZLynx Management System for your agency whether you are a large multi-location agency or a small local office. Our management system gives you the tools you need when you need them.

You can learn more about EZLynx Management System here, or you can fill out the form below with your questions and comments.

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More Ways to Help Agencies with their Customer Servicing

Posted on by EZLynx

Everyone has a story of a bad customer service experience that shaped his or her perception of a company; however, most of the day to day interactions are mundane. When a company comes along that truly provides an exceptional service, it stands out in the sea of mediocre experiences and often creates a life-long bond with the customer. EZLynx believes it can leverage technology to help its agencies gain efficiency in service to provide an extraordinary experience every time.  For several years, we’ve focused on developing solutions that increase an agency’s profitability, productivity, serviceability, and scalability.  We believe that several current and upcoming features will help agencies achieve significant gains in the time it takes to provide an exceptional service experience for the customer!

Agency Workspace

This is your one-stop shop in EZLynx for seamless multi-tasking and collaboration. Agency Workspace is the primary area for keeping track of tasks, notes, notifications, reminders, and text messages in one area.

This directly contributes to an agent’s ability to provide prompt, efficient customer service. Quickly access the context for customer related tasks and notes, track your latest tasks, and immediately see important notifications.

Other systems simply list activities in reverse chronological order, so agents spend hours pouring through all these activities to piece together the context of a note or activity (other systems call it a diary). EZLynx has several methods to pull in the context and organize this for the agencies, saving agent’s time and frustration.

Client Center

It’s a no-brainer that giving your customers a way to access policy details and documents on their own will save them (and you) from an extra phone call or email.  Client Center makes this possible, and it can be seamlessly integrated into your website.

Clients can submit change requests and other inquiries directly from Client Center as well. These requests, rather than getting buried in your email inbox, drop directly into EZLynx. Agents will be assigned a Task with all the relevant details that they can easily track from within their Agency Workspace.

Change Requests

Change requests and endorsements are time consuming for agencies. One of your agents must document the need from the customer, make a change on the carrier’s website, and keep the data in sync with the management system.  In 30 days, one of your agents must remember to verify that the carrier processed the change correctly. This process is time consuming and fraught with human error.

To streamline this process, we have introduced a change request workflow to simplify the documentation, confirmation and tracking for an agency. Simply make the policy changes directly in EZLynx. The green preview allows you to quickly verify the changes while you are entering them.

Change Requests

When you save, EZLynx generates a memo of the requested changes that you can send to the carrier, share with the insured, or include in an eSignature. For carriers that require it, one action will generate the ACORD change request forms. The memo clearly identifies additions, deletions, and changes in a way that even the insured can easily understand. With one click, we will pre-fill the note with the description of the change and attach a copy for follow up. Agents can easily complete this process and share it with the insured to review by the time the call ends. Once the carrier processes the change, we automatically verify the downloaded change is accurate and confirm it. If the policy is manually entered, your agent can confirm that everything is correct with a simple click.

Change Requests

Part of creating an exceptional customer experience relies on an omnichannel communication platform. Every customer has different communication preferences, so agents can deliver the memo via the customer portal, email, mail, or even documented text message. Since EZLynx is a single platform, all of the customer correspondence is readily available on the customer’s account so that any agent can provide continuity during service in any channel.

Claims

The first claim is a defining point in the insured’s relationship with their agent and is an excellent opportunity to provide exceptional service to your client. Insured’s frequently rely on the agent to guide them through the process, answer questions, and manage expectations. Customers expect their agent to have the latest information from the carrier. To keep agents up to date on the claims information from the carrier, EZLynx offers downloaded and manual claim support. We summarize the latest information from the carrier on the client’s account so customer service representatives can quickly answer questions on claim number, adjuster information, payments, and the claim status. On each policy, we provide a detailed view of all of the claims transactions.

Claims

Providing your customers with exceptional customer service every time is no simple task. While it is an important part of the value you offer as an independent agent, we know it can be tedious and time consuming to keep up with all the data and different communication channels. Agents can easily miss something when bouncing back and forth in multiple systems. Leveraging our single platform and technology to your advantage frees up your agents to focus on the customer experience. We’re focused on building out new features and enhancements to improve an agencies profitability, productivity, serviceability, and scalability. These latest features help simplify the service documentation in your agency, so you can spend time on what really matters – your customers.

If you are interested in learning more about how EZLynx can help you save time and increase productivity with your customer service, please let us know below.

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EZLynx Announces Insurance Industry’s First Agency Management System for Market Access Providers

Posted on by EZLynx

Announced at the AgentLynx 2018 User Conference in San Diego, EZLynx revealed the insurance industry’s first agency management system for Market Access Providers and Agent Networks called Compass.  Compass addresses the workflows and communication needs of Market Access Providers and Agent Networks in ways not previously available.

Harnessing the power of the EZLynx ONE PLATFORM, Compass addresses the three pillars of Market Access Provider success: Carrier Management, Member Management, and Commissions Processing. The system does this by enabling Market Access Providers in two distinctly valuable ways.

First, Compass provides the framework for unprecedented interconnectivity between the Market Access Provider and its member agencies. Second, Compass delivers unprecedented reporting and analytics, providing the means for data-driven decisions and discovering key opportunities to increase their revenue and profitability.

Specific needs for this fast-growing, disruptive segment of the independent insurance market include regular, operational and practicable communication to members; seamless integration with the member agency’s management system; the aggregation of carrier data, including policy downloads and commission allocation; and the ability to manage reporting, productivity and success for both the individual agencies and the Market Access Provider as a whole.

“Our Market Access Provider customers have come to us with a very specific set of challenges,” said EZLynx Product Manager Jonathan Kolbo. “They have tremendous potential for growth, but the tools and the software that they use just won’t keep up—particularly in the areas of reporting and analytics. Compass provides the complete solution. It is the first agency network management system, and it is purpose-built for agency networks to increase the effectiveness of their agents and the efficiency of their operations. Compass provides a complete view of all activity across the entire network.”

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EZLynx Roadmap for 2018

Posted on by Nag Rao

A Note from the CEO

Happy New Year! It looks like 2018 is going to be another good year for our industry. It is our feeling that independent agents have been well positioned in the market for more than a decade now. Our industry’s business model of offering ‘choice of carrier’ to consumers is both internet and millennial friendly. We believe our industry will continue to gain market share because of this one single factor.

I want to thank our customers who have supported our products through the years and our many new customers who joined us in 2017. Outlining the roadmap at the beginning of the year is a tradition that we started many years ago, and it seems the competition has followed our lead – I have seen several other management and rating system vendor CEOs do the same. It is inspiring to see the impact that our vision and strategic thinking has had on our industry, especially with our competition!

2017 has been another banner year for us as we once again expanded our market share. We are looking forward to another great year. As long as we continue to work towards your best interests, we will all win.

Agency profitability, productivity, and serviceability were the key focus areas in 2017. In the spirit of productivity and serviceability we enhanced our management system product throughout the year. Many of these enhancements were in direct response to your feedback. We introduced several new and exciting features in 2017, including claim downloads, policy change requests, enhanced reporting & analytics, and postal mail integration.  Claim downloads and the policy change request feature directly affect how you service your customers. I am particularly proud of my team’s effort with the policy change request feature, which allows the agent to capture all the necessary information and submit it to the carrier for finalization in a single workflow. As part of this workflow you can highlight and submit only the parts of the policy that will be changed to avoid any mistakes. This feature is priceless when it comes to change management with commercial policies where any mistake can be costly.

Our new postal mail integration is another one of my favorite features released last year. Agents are already using it heavily to mail important policy documents, policy notifications, welcome letters, and other documents to their policy holders or prospects with a few clicks of a button. It’s a great productivity enhancing feature that can save time and money.

We made several big enhancements to other areas of our product including reporting, policy accounting, agency workspace, and more. You can view our past release notes for more details on these features.

One of the big promises I made in 2017 was to focus on agency automation. We delivered a beta version of this feature in the second half of 2017. EZLynx Automation Center lets you define rules to perform certain actions based on policy events. In its first iteration, we limited the support to a handful of pre-defined events with simple email and task related actions. We have received excellent feedback from our beta participants, and we are excited to unveil some exciting new enhancements at our AgentLynx User Conference in March. It is our intention to robustly expand this feature with support for more events, actions, and more complex, condition-based workflows. EZLynx Automation Center will soon become the glue that integrates all our products and features together and drastically improves your productivity in incredible ways.

Roadmap for 2018

Our AgentLynx User Conference will be in San Diego this year on March 12 – 14. I strongly urge all of our customers to attend this exciting event if you are serious about building your agency around EZLynx. I promise you this is not about sales or marketing, but about technology, insurance, and maximizing your potential as independent agents. We will be introducing several new and cool products this year that my team has been working on for months now. You will also be able to speak directly with our Executive Team, Product Managers, Business Analysts, and select staff from our Product Support and Training Teams. The conference is just a few months away, so don’t wait to reserve your spot!

As for the rest of the year, we have a busy schedule ahead of us. We will continue to enhance our policy management system to round out more of our commercial features. One feature that I am excited about is Policy Transaction Editing. As most of you know, the dataset that we get from carriers through the download is inconsistent and sometimes wrong. Using this feature, you can control how you manage these inconsistencies by using a set of ‘crowd’ or user defined rules. Our goal is to reduce errors and also to make the download processing and matching effortless.

This year we will also officially release Automation Center, as well as expand it to include integration with our products like Sales Center, Retention Center, Policy Accounting, and more. It is our goal to let agents automate the daily important, but mundane, tasks that a computer can easily perform.

We have several new “secret” features for 2018 that we are excited to reveal at our AgentLynx User Conference, including our plans to refresh the look and feel of EZLynx with a new, modern interface. I want to end this note leaving you with the same impression as I always do – that EZLynx is dedicated to making you successful. We are constantly working on your behalf and watching out for market changes to make sure you are covered. We’ve got your back.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments.

-Nag Rao, CEO

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