Meet Insurance Brokerage
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Define the role of an independent brokerage.
- Describe the main challenges that insurance brokerages face.
- List the key features and benefits of Insurance Brokerage for Financial Services Cloud.
- Explain the purpose and structure of broker of record (BoR) management.
Before you start this module, complete the following content to help you build a strong foundation.
The Evolving Landscape of Insurance Brokerage
Insurance brokerages are independent firms that play a pivotal role in the financial world. Unlike captive agents, who represent a single carrier, independent brokerages work across multiple carriers to find the best solutions for their clients.
Acting as trusted advisors, insurance brokerages navigate the complexities of insurance, negotiate optimal policies, and manage critical aspects such as coverage terms and premiums. Their success is closely aligned with their clients’, as they typically earn commission-based compensation tied to policy placements.
Brokerages serve diverse lines of business, each with unique demands and dynamics:
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Employee benefits (EB) assists employers in offering comprehensive benefits packages, such as health, dental, and life insurance.
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Commercial property & casualty (P&C) helps businesses mitigate risks through customized coverage for property, liability, and other exposures.
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Personal lines (P&C) protect individuals’ assets, including homes and vehicles.
The insurance industry is evolving rapidly, presenting brokerages with both challenges and opportunities. Clients now expect personalized, digital-first experiences, while brokerages face intensifying competition and operational pressures. Moreover, their outdated systems hold them back from adapting to client needs and market trends.
Common challenges include:
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Fragmented systems: Many brokerages rely on a patchwork of disconnected systems for client management, policy administration, claims processing, and more. This lack of integration leads to data silos, manual reentry of information, and inefficient workflows. Think about switching between multiple apps to enter client info. It’s a hassle, right?
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Limited client insights: Data that is dispersed across systems prevents a holistic view of clients, hindering personalized advice, cross-selling opportunities, and proactive risk management.
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Data management issues: Duplicate or inconsistent data entry across multiple systems wastes time and increases the likelihood of errors, potentially leading to compliance issues and damaged client relationships.
For modern-day brokerages, a unified, digital platform is a must.
Meet Insurance Brokerage for Financial Services Cloud
Insurance Brokerage for Financial Services Cloud is an integrated platform that empowers brokerages with seamless service, actionable insights, and efficient operations. The solution unifies client engagement, policy management, and revenue processing into one cohesive system.
With this solution, you can:
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Gain a 360-degree client view: Access and manage a comprehensive view of clients, their needs, and their insurance portfolio in one place to deliver personalized advice and proactively manage risks.
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Reduce manual work: Automate key tasks to minimize repetition, so teams can focus more on client relationships.
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Improve agility: Quickly adapt to market changes and client demands with a flexible, configurable platform.
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Gain deeper insights: Use strong analytics tools to uncover viable insights and make informed business decisions.
Built on Financial Services Cloud, this solution integrates essential capabilities across client engagement, policy management, and commissions tracking, creating a connected experience for brokers and their clients.
Financial Services Cloud combines industry-specific features with core Salesforce capabilities, ensuring you can efficiently manage policies, automate processes, and influence deeper customer engagement.
Here are some examples of how these features can support you in delivering exceptional service.
Feature |
What It Does |
|---|---|
Action Plans |
Create structured workflows for onboarding, renewals, and recurring tasks to ensure consistent service delivery. |
Discovery Framework |
Gather client data through digital forms to simplify needs assessments and enhance compliance. |
Interaction Summaries |
Maintain detailed records of client meetings to align your team with client goals and key takeaways. |
Insurance Brokerage for Financial Services Cloud provides comprehensive tools to support you throughout the client lifecycle.
This table introduces the goal of each stage in the client lifecycle and the key capabilities of Insurance Brokerage.
Stage |
Goal |
Capabilities |
|---|---|---|
Client Engagement |
Automate client onboarding and manage relationships. |
Refine communication, BoR management, and onboarding tasks. |
Line of Business Servicing |
Organize and simplify policy and plan servicing across multiple lines of business. |
Complete lifecycle management activities for policy renewals, cancellations, and endorsements. Employee benefits: Manage plan configurations, enabling standardization and benchmarking of benefits across carriers. |
Commissions and Revenue Management |
Efficiently manage commissions and ensure accurate processing. |
Automate direct bill commission tracking, simplify producer split assignments, and calculate expected revenue. |
Ongoing Account Management |
Proactively monitor and personalize client service. |
Identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities while deepening client relationships. |
To see these tools in action, let’s follow Cumulus Brokerage, an independent firm specializing in both EB and P&C lines of business.
Follow the Insurance Brokerage Journey
With a growing client base, Cumulus uses Financial Services Cloud to simplify operations, deliver proactive service, and strengthen client trust.
As Cumulus adapts to an evolving industry, a critical focus area is optimizing client engagement, starting with broker of record management. The BoR designation is fundamental to insurance brokerage operations. It grants a brokerage the legal authority to act on behalf of a client with insurance carriers, enabling the brokerage to manage policies, recommend new coverage, and serve as a trusted advisor.
For new clients, the BoR process begins when the brokerage identifies an opportunity, such as securing medical coverage for a business. Once the broker wins an opportunity, they create a client account in the system. This establishes the BoR record for the specific line of coverage.
For example, when Cumulus Brokerage won the opportunity to act as the broker of record for Sally’s Aviation Charter on a medical coverage line, the system created a BoR record for this coverage, linking it to Sally’s client account.
Once the BoR was set, Cumulus used a structured onboarding process to ensure seamless integration and service. The first step was account team building: Cumulus chose the account team of service and implementation experts. The team defined a service plan, addressed deviations from standard operating procedures (SOPs), and scheduled immediate work. During this preparation phase, the team made sure they were clear about the client’s expectations.
Client onboarding followed, with focused activities designed to engage the client and formalize the relationship. The team held meetings to introduce the service team and establish communication channels, which included distribution lists and newsletters. To wrap up, the Cumulus team sent a census request letter to the client and finalized the consulting agreements and fees.
As their relationship deepens, brokerages can manage multiple BoR records for the same client across different lines of coverage. For instance, later on, Cumulus might secure auto coverage for Sally’s Aviation. In this case, the team creates a separate BoR for the new line of coverage, which also connects to Sally’s account.
This structure ensures a clear, centralized view of the client’s entire insurance portfolio.
These BoR capabilities are just the starting point. In the next unit, you dive deeper into core insurance brokerage operations to focus on managing plan benefits and optimizing the policy lifecycle. Let’s carry on!