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New Products And Platforms Deliver Profitable Results
Ease of doing business. These four words describe what most independent agencies require in order to place their customer with a carrier.
In 2009, The Main Street America Group tackled this need head-on by not only providing new products and services but also introducing state-of-the-art technology solutions, including the 16-state rollout of Main Street Station for Commercial Lines, our new commercial lines quoting and policy issuance system.
“It’s a point-and-click system,” said Kristin Caporale, commercial lines marketing representative at Mackintire Insurance Agency, Westborough, Mass., who also participated in the Main Street Station for Commercial Lines pilot. “Everything is right on the system. The underwriting guidelines are there, the class codes are there. Because it’s faster, the policies are released faster.” Accompanying the rollout of our robust new policy processing system was the introduction of Main Line BOP in 14 states. The new business owners policy offers broader eligibility, very competitive pricing and a wide array of coverages and options, including the addition of four new programs – restaurants, condo associations, garages and light manufacturing – to the existing six.
“We have almost always had double-digit growth with Main Street America,” said Bob Mackintire, president of the Mackintire Insurance Agency. “But I think we really kicked it into overdrive when Main Line BOP came out.” And the numbers speak for themselves. In 2009, the volume of commercial lines new business policies written by the Mackintire Agency with Main Street America nearly doubled from 46 to 86, with Main Line BOP accounting for more than half of these new policies.
Business is also hopping on the personal lines side with the launch of our new personal lines quoting and policy issuance systems in eight states.
Prior to the introduction of the system in Michigan, customers printed and mailed ACORD applications to our underwriters for processing. Those “manual processing” days are a thing of the past.
“The system has improved their ease of doing business tremendously because before it was all paper,” said Steve Wilson, president of the Alpena Agency, Alpena, Mich. “It also seamlessly works with our comparative raters.” In addition to receiving a new system, Michigan customers were also given access to our Personal Auto MVP predictive modeling product in May 2009, as well as our full line of commercial lines products in July 2009.
“One of the most exciting things about writing business with Main Street America is that not everybody else in the state represents them,” Steve stressed. “It’s a fresh company with new products and that adds a lot of value because they are not on every corner.” Bob echoed Steve’s sentiments about how doing business with Main Street America differs from other carriers.
“We were lucky to get the system and product first,” he said. “With the national carriers, Massachusetts is usually last with getting the new products and technology.
So that’s an advantage of working with a regional carrier.”
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