Rewrite Button

[1manshow]

One of my staff was telling me that she was trying to get a client a lower rate on car insurance when another csr suggested hitting the "rewrite" button on a certain carrier's website. What? So...she hits the button and turns out the client hits a better tier and the rate goes down 200 bucks. As I was leaving I told her to try mine....came in today and she tells me mine is $414 a year less after rewriting. This just seems ridiculous to me. So...if we aren't constantly monitoring the carriers and their rating platforms there's a good chance we could be outbid by another agent with the same carrier.

Does this me we have to remarket every personal lines account on every renewal?

 

[Josh]

In NY Allstate killed Allstate Indemnity and became Allstate Property and Casualty (I may have those two mixed up). The new company gave most customers a better rate, so a lot of agents went through and rewrote their books. It mean taking a haircut and putting their loss ratio at more risk, but they thought it was a good decision.

The result:
Agencies that disturbed their book not only ended up taking a haircut, but it reminded people to shop their car insurance so they ended up losing more customers by a noteworthy percentage than those that just left their clients alone. They literally would have kept more clients and been ahead of the game if they had done nothing.

 

[NCAgent]

In NY Allstate killed Allstate Indemnity and became Allstate Property and Casualty (I may have those two mixed up). The new company gave most customers a better rate, so a lot of agents went through and rewrote their books. It mean taking a haircut and putting their loss ratio at more risk, but they thought it was a good decision.

The result:
Agencies that disturbed their book not only ended up taking a haircut, but it reminded people to shop their car insurance so they ended up losing more customers by a noteworthy percentage than those that just left their clients alone. They literally would have kept more clients and been ahead of the game if they had done nothing.

Makes sense, Allstate Indemnity was the line 19 of Allstate (the non-preferred) and Allstate P&C was the line 10 (the preferred). And yeah, there is more to it than just a rate, though there are some times you might want to do it for some clients if the relationship is a little stressed. I don't want to get paid less for more work and more chances to lose my people.

 

[Josh]

Makes sense, Allstate Indemnity was the line 19 of Allstate (the non-preferred) and Allstate P&C was the line 10 (the preferred). And yeah, there is more to it than just a rate, though there are some times you might want to do it for some clients if the relationship is a little stressed. I don't want to get paid less for more work and more chances to lose my people.

It was line 10 to line 10. Just starting a new risk pool.

 

[bobson]

One of my staff was telling me that she was trying to get a client a lower rate on car insurance when another csr suggested hitting the "rewrite" button on a certain carrier's website. What? So...she hits the button and turns out the client hits a better tier and the rate goes down 200 bucks. As I was leaving I told her to try mine....came in today and she tells me mine is $414 a year less after rewriting. This just seems ridiculous to me. So...if we aren't constantly monitoring the carriers and their rating platforms there's a good chance we could be outbid by another agent with the same carrier.

Does this me we have to remarket every personal lines account on every renewal?

Don't you miss the days of an actual underwriter with rating calculations you could understand? Even with all these "advances" carriers still have to adjust rates each year. Shouldn't these 'black boxes' charge the right rate everytime? At least that is what our carrier marketing reps would have us believe.

Besides you're a much better risk today than you were last week.

 

[BlockO]

Don't you miss the days of an actual underwriter with rating calculations you could understand?

try explaining to an existing customer that despite the fact that they just sold one of their vehicles (but didn't lose muti-car discount), their rate would go up instead of down if I were to drop the vehicle from the policy.

I just had this happen a couple weeks ago, but I have seen it way more than once, and it seems to be getting more common.