Among the biggest challenges insurance brokerages face are the time-consuming manual insurance workflows and underwriting processes. Manual data entry is prone to error, tech tools function in isolation, and data exists in silos.
An open BMS can streamline processes with the right integrations, and sync client data across all the tools, making the workflow more efficient and seamless. Here’s how using a core BMS can help your brokerage stay competitive, run smoother, and grow faster.
What is an “open platform” BMS?
A BMS can transform a brokerage organization and streamline their workflows. But the open environment of a BMS can further drive efficiency to a brokerage with connectivity and integrations.
An open-platform brokerage management system (BMS) is designed to easily connect with other software solutions through Industrialized APIs, which allow data to move back and forth between tools securely and automatically.
By using an open platform, brokerages gain the flexibility to choose solutions that fit their operations and solve their unique problems. For example, a brokerage can connect their BMS with tools like CRM, marketing automation, lead generation, and data analytics that help run their business.
This kind of connectivity means the BMS becomes the central hub of an integrated tech ecosystem. This gives brokers more efficient workflows and real-time collaboration across departments and tools—and ultimately more time with clients instead of their computers.
How integrations drive brokerage growth
Every business is a technology business. Because a company’s tech stack speeds up workflows, connects staff to clients, and helps information sharing, technology is tied to performance. Corporate strategy and technology strategy go hand in hand.
Common helpful BMS integrations include:
- Client communication tools to automate many marketing functions
- Insurance knowledge databases to make industry knowledge accessible
- Client portals to help clients access their information and make policy changes
An open-platform BMS helps brokers drive their competitive advantage while using technology as a strategic enabler. The open platform uses tools that give brokers the agility and adaptability to respond as the market changes.
Choosing integrations, you can trust
The one item a broker should not overlook when considering a BMS partner is the importance of agility and adaptability to respond as the market changes.
Strategic partnerships, like Vertafore’s Orange Partners, offer confidence in their ease of implementation. Each Orange Partner is vetted before receiving an endorsement from Vertafore. Brokerages can trust that Orange Partner APIs are secure, have a quick onboarding process, and have proven they add value to other brokerages.
Outside of Orange Partners, many other InsurTech solutions can be integrated into an open-platform BMS. In this way, the open platform offers agility for brokers to adapt as their business needs, or the market, changes.
The competitive advantage of digital client experiences
Consumer needs are changing fast. The way they expect insurance brokers to interact with them is changing, too.
Open platforms allow for tools that enhance the digital customer experience, ranging from client portals to intake forms. And while insurance traditionally has a problem of using paper forms and requiring brokers to manually reenter data to carry out different functions, a modern BMS can connect data across tools while keeping client information safe.
Clients can enter their own information when requesting a quote, and that data will be transferred through policy writing, into a brokerage CRM, and even appear in a BMS so when a client calls with a question, that information is at a broker’s fingertips.
One example is that Canadian InsurTech company Calefy is taking advantage of Vertafore’s BMS to integrate data throughout the brokerage and put more time back in brokers’ days.
Calefy uses an API to help insurance customers get a quote directly from a broker’s website and save it to the insurance broker software. That information gets collected right from the website. Speeding up the policy-writing process.
That remote flexibility works for brokers, too. As many workers take their laptops home, on vacation, or to a coffee shop outside the office, an open platform BMS allows the digital broker to work anywhere at any time and trust that remote access is secure.
The open platform is about helping brokers become ecosystem enabled. Ultimately this leads to better client experiences, more efficient workflows, and adaptability for all the coming changes in the insurance industry.