Avoiding Gaps with a Holistic Insurance Analysis

It is so important for a broker and agent to work as a team to make sure there are no gaps in an insured's program.  I recently reviewed a layered placement where $10mm of earthquake was in a primary and $10mm was written with a different company in the excess.  The excess included earthquake sprinkler leakage (EQSL), but the primary had EQSL sublimited to $5mm.  Whoops.  Luckily, we were able to get the excess to drop down to $5mm on the EQSL and save the day.

Make a checklist of everything you want to look for in each policy and consistently check each one.  If you don't place the entire program, ask for the layers around you to make sure everything is ok.  There are so many people out there not doing this, so it may be your competitive advantage, or at the very least, keep you from losing an account from gaps that are uncovered by more diligent competitors.

The Coolest Automation Tool

I found "Macro Scheduler" about 10 years ago.  There are at least 10 tasks you do on your computer every day that can be automated with this program.  Marcus has done a phenomenal job constantly adding innovations over the years.  Do yourself a favor and try the program for 30 days.  I've created scripts with this program that literally save me and my team several hours of computer work each week.  Believe me, it will pay for itself quickly.

Increase Productivity in 10 Seconds or Less

I'm the geek that Seth warned you about.  I love to take monotonous tasks out of my day (and my co-worker's days).  The tools you use every day can automate repetitive tasks to get you on to more important things.

You would be surprised at how quickly you can increase your productivity by understanding some of the basic stuff that Microsoft Office can do.  In your business, you probably find that there are certain phrases you have to type over and over again, like 'Thank You', the name of your company or your name.  One of the easiest things you can do is use Microsoft's 'AutoCorrect' feature in Word to put in a two or three letter shorthand for what you'd like to type and have AutoCorrect put the word in for you.  In the insurance business, I use 'underwriter' and 'plus taxes and fees' quite a bit.  In Word, I asked AutoCorrect to change 'uw' to 'underwriter' and 'tf' to 'plus taxes and fees'.  I also have it change 'rts' to the name of my company 'R-T Specialty'.  When I type, 'endo' automatically changes to 'endorsement', and 'ty' changes to 'Thank You'.  These little things will only save a few seconds in each sentence, but that's really going to add up over a year.