In Home Healthcare's seems too tedious to continue!

[Gustavo Fring]

My father found a niche of writing In Home Health Cares at least 10 years ago and we've built a premium amount of around $1,000,000. He's 67, slowing down, and probably going to retire soon. The problem I have with writing In Home Home Health Cares is that it's a Surplus Lines type of risk that only certain companies like Hiscox will write. That means that there's a General Agent/Wholesaler Insurance company in between that can often slow down the quoting process and the service process. Even just servicing in home healthcare's can get complicated when quoting and filling out certificates because of so many additional insureds and waiver of subrogations in this industry. This is a nice big chunk of business and we get referral after referrals, but I don't know if I want to continue writing this kind of business since my niche is Real Estate and commercial Real Estate. There's no Agency Management software that streamlines the servicing. I suppose I could hire and train someone on the minor complexities of servicing but I don't know if this is a good idea. What do you think?

 

[Life Hawk]

Manage the current business and focus what is making you money right now.

Two feet going opposite directions may not be a good position to be in.

IMHO... not a real estate guy.

 

[Gustavo Fring]

Manage the current business and focus what is making you money right now.

Two feet going opposite directions may not be a good position to be in.

IMHO... not a real estate guy.

I'm probably not making myself clear. He's retiring, and I don't know if I want to buy him out and continue this slow and more technical surplus lines process. It takes a lot of servicing and nuance to continue this surplus line of business, so much so that all 3 people in the office are servicing and not selling so there is not a lot of upwards scale. Yes, I'm the Real Estate guy with a buyers list. I've noticed that it's easy to upsell to people you already have a relationship with. This theory of business is pretty solid.

 

[Life Hawk]

All I'm saying is that it would be a poor choice for most agents to mix the two. Focus on your strengths.

 

[Gustavo Fring]

All I'm saying is that it would be a poor choice for most agents to mix the two. Focus on your strengths.

1. It's not my strength. It was once my dad's strength and he's retiring. If anything, we're losing revenue and profit. I'm having a hard time figuring out how I would train someone else to service these clients while I make more time for scaling.
2. P&C Agencies acquire books of business that have nothing to do with what they're writing all the time within the P&C industry. If I want to continue with what my dad built, I would want to figure out what they are doing. I guess I have to ask them this hypothetical question of what they would do.

 

[AZDave]

My father found a niche of writing In Home Health Cares at least 10 years ago and we've built a premium amount of around $1,000,000. He's 67, slowing down, and probably going to retire soon. The problem I have with writing In Home Home Health Cares is that it's a Surplus Lines type of risk that only certain companies like Hiscox will write. That means that there's a General Agent/Wholesaler Insurance company in between that can often slow down the quoting process and the service process. Even just servicing in home healthcare's can get complicated when quoting and filling out certificates because of so many additional insureds and waiver of subrogations in this industry. This is a nice big chunk of business and we get referral after referrals, but I don't know if I want to continue writing this kind of business since my niche is Real Estate and commercial Real Estate. There's no Agency Management software that streamlines the servicing. I suppose I could hire and train someone on the minor complexities of servicing but I don't know if this is a good idea. What do you think?

I understand your hesitation. Surplus lines is heavy work. The quoting, the binding, the agency billing/financing, the auditing - Ugh! Maybe a VA that specializes with accords and mga submissions? The premium size is big enough to entertain hiring an account executive. I guess it may depend on what pop wants out of it?

I have my share of surplus lines with my contractor book. Premium needs to be over $5k for me to mess with it, even then, sometimes not worth it.

 

[jspyder85]

1. It's not my strength. It was once my dad's strength and he's retiring. If anything, we're losing revenue and profit. I'm having a hard time figuring out how I would train someone else to service these clients while I make more time for scaling.
2. P&C Agencies acquire books of business that have nothing to do with what they're writing all the time within the P&C industry. If I want to continue with what my dad built, I would want to figure out what they are doing. I guess I have to ask them this hypothetical question of what they would do.

Would your dad consider staying on long enough to train a new (to you) agent on how he did it? Maybe even if he worked a couple days a week for a few months. How long would it take if you had a sharp agent learning from him?

 

[myfakename]

I'm probably not making myself clear. He's retiring, and I don't know if I want to buy him out and continue this slow and more technical surplus lines process. It takes a lot of servicing and nuance to continue this surplus line of business, so much so that all 3 people in the office are servicing and not selling so there is not a lot of upwards scale. Yes, I'm the Real Estate guy with a buyers list. I've noticed that it's easy to upsell to people you already have a relationship with. This theory of business is pretty solid.

You have 3 people servicing a 1mil Book of (probably 10% commission) surplus lines??? Your agency is losing money on this. Sell or even give it away.

 

[Gustavo Fring]

I understand your hesitation. Surplus lines is heavy work. The quoting, the binding, the agency billing/financing, the auditing - Ugh! Maybe a VA that specializes with accords and mga submissions? The premium size is big enough to entertain hiring an account executive. I guess it may depend on what pop wants out of it?

I have my share of surplus lines with my contractor book. Premium needs to be over $5k for me to mess with it, even then, sometimes not worth it.

Thanks for your insight. It sounds like all surplus lines shows more nuance. Do you find the general agent / broker process to be a challenge since all service and quoting communication is done through email and not to your agency management system?

Usually we take every quote from new businesses we can juggle while waiting for a customer to grow to $5,000 in premium. Obviously this doesn't usually happen.

 

[Gustavo Fring]

Would your dad consider staying on long enough to train a new (to you) agent on how he did it? Maybe even if he worked a couple days a week for a few months. How long would it take if you had a sharp agent learning from him?

That’s a good question. I've asked him to break down everything for me but I have to figure it out myself. I’ve been compiling the business system little by little, and when I’m done, I’ll ascertain quantifiable metrics to determine what is and isn’t efficient and what is time wasting. For instance, we have a third employee who is a family member of ours. She works virtually from home and it’s her job to make sure that customers who are chronically late on paying their bills are notified twice. I would assess this and see if having a much better onboarding process could cut this non money producing activity down as much as possible. Another thing we could do is make sure to emphasize setting the customer up on EFT as much as possible or showing the customer how to pay bills online through the Finance Company’s website. Unfortunately, we’re not using an Agency Management system or CRM. So we’re putting Policy Mail Outs in a document folder on the pc along with endorsements and other document files. Tell me if you find this to be worse than using an Agency management system. We also have 2007 version of Outlook that we’re still using. Everyone besides me is working remotely and no one can see an updated version of customer information in real time besides my aunt (third employee). I have to wait for my dad to upload customer info from my aunt’s computer, and he comes into the office to download the updated data.