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Happy New Year. Over the past few months, I was involved in an interesting sales cycle, working to help a mid-size insurance company with a few seemingly simple problems. It started with a discussion at a trade-show. This is the first of a few posts profiling their situation:

The Problem
This private company, like most, wants to grow. They have been around for over half a century, clearly understand their market and know where they can excel. However, over the years competition crept in. They are still the market leader in their primary lines of insurance, but growth has stagnated, margins are bare bones, and market share is decreasing.

They believe there are a few primary factors contributing to this:

1. High prices - the competition is undercutting their prices and while they have not engendered the same level of trust, saving money is a compelling driver to chose the lesser known provider
2. Slow turn-around on quotes - they rely on an independent broker model to identify new applicants, yet only 10-20% provide a bulk of the business. When a broker requests a quote, while the company does not know the actual turn-around time because there is no reliable way to measure, they estimate it takes 5 days. This leaves too much room for the competition to swoop in, provide a reasonable quote, and take the business. Usually the first one to provide a quote wins the business.
3. Slow turn-around on policy issuance - the application review process takes too long. Similar to slow quote turn-around, they have no reliable metrics, but estimate it can take 2+ weeks to issue a policy. Again, that leaves too much time for the competition to
   take the business.
4. Lack of "lead generation" through Underwriters - since they are spending so much time chasing documents for new applications, they are not taking time to drive leads from the independent brokers. Therefore driving more business from the same 10-20% of brokers, or increasing this percentage, is very difficult.
5. Delayed release of new products - the amount of retooling time required to just change a form delays the release of new insurance products.
6. High attrition in Underwriting - the inefficiencies lead to increased overtime, which frustrates and burns-out employees. Since they are known for good training, they ramp up an employee quickly only to see them leave for the competition. Compounding this damage, these employees talk to their old colleagues, who then leave to join the same company. Now they have lost multiple employees after having spent $thousands on training. They are unable to issue more policies faster as their current processes require additional human resources, which undoubtedly frustrates the independent brokers, who logically seek another provider to satisfy their client. All while further bolstering their competition. This is clearly a downward spiral.

These problems are certainly not unique. Next I will explore their primary challenge.