Flipping the Traditional Commercial Insurance Pyramid

As an agent, your job is to sell insurance to companies, to help protect them from risk. Many in the industry view insurance as the ultimate safety net for employers—but in actuality, insurance is the least effective form of risk management.  

To truly manage your clients’ risk (and set yourself apart from most agents), you need to sell more than just insurance. You need to “flip the insurance pyramid” and think about prevention first and insurance last. 

By the way, we’re not saying insurance isn’t important—it’s essential! But with the right approach, many claims and bad outcomes can be prevented before they happen. 

Flipping the pyramid 

This pyramid illustrates how most agents talk about risk and insurance.  

1. 1. The main focus is selling (and retaining) the insurance coverage. 
   2. There may be some focus on containment of incidents that occur. 
   3. There tends to be much less focus on prevention measures to avoid incidents in the first place. 

Our philosophy is to flip that traditional approach on its head and lead with prevention. 

1. 1. Spend the most time focusing on preventing incidents, through safety programs, compliance support, and education. 
   2. When an incident does occur, make containment a priority. For a workplace injury, for example, laser focus on limiting days away from work to reduce the impact on the ex-mod. 
   3. And, of course, insurance is still critically necessary to protect employers when incidents occur.  
      

By approaching clients this way, your impact (and value) skyrockets well beyond simple quoting and claims management. You can help your clients reduce incidents, lower claims costs, drive down premium costs, and ultimately provide a safer environment for their employees.  

Benefits to you as the agent 

As an agent, do you want to be hired because of the quote you provide or the value you bring? (And if you are hired for the lowest quote, what’s stopping that client from shopping around every year?) 

Bringing a “prevent first” approach to your clients adds so much more value than simply checking the insurance box, making it easier to strengthen and retain that relationship. 

Now consider your sales process with a “prevent first” mindset. You may be the first agent to truly explain risk management to prospective employers, and with the right tools to deliver, you are suddenly extremely differentiated from the incumbent or any other agent that comes calling. 

Deliver 4 essential advantages to your clients 

Embracing this “prevent first” approach allows you to do four things extremely well for your clients. 

1. 1. Focus on the root cause: Help clients prevent incidents and bad outcomes by focusing your entire process on year-round prevention. Empower your clients with the education, strategies and tools to focus on the root causes of incidents (and rising insurance costs). 
   2. Unlock better pricing from insurance underwriters: An underwriter’s job is to make a judgment call on how risky an account is, and thus how to price it, essentially averaging out each account with the rest of the companies they review. As an agent, you can advocate to the underwriter on behalf of your client, to show that they are taking active risk management and prevention steps to make their account less risky. 
   3. Offer protection in ways insurance can’t: As we discussed earlier, insurance should be the last line of defense, not the first. Implementing the right safety programs and procedures can help employers avoid tragic, preventable injuries and fatalities.  
   4. Create safer workplaces: Helping clients create safer workplaces that protect their workers is simply the right thing to do.  

Emerge Apps equips you with the tools and resources you need to deliver these benefits to your clients, including  

• • Automated safety training 
  • Simple OSHA reporting software 
  • Mod analysis software  
  • Compliance checklists to identify and close gaps 

Request a demo to learn more today!