Global challenges like geopolitical disruptions, inflation, and tight labor markets, as well as continued evolution of risks, bring both hurdles and chances to drive premium profitability. Technology investments and data are reshaping core operations and human interactions, paving the way for insurance companies to grow well into the future.
Here at Ivans, we are focused on delivering innovation that seamlessly connects your entire distribution channel. Our goal? To create more data insights, enhance agency experiences, and ultimately improve your combined ratio. As the industry's connectivity hub, we've forged new partnerships with carriers to expand product distribution through our network, brought on more technology partners for quotes and downloads, and now, we are reaching more agents than ever with crucial policy, claims, and commission information.
Let’s look at how our investments have created more value for you and your business this year and how we intend to build on it for the future.
Connecting Your Distribution Channel
Your agency channel is critical to driving premium profitability, and our investments this past year have been focused on finding you growth opportunities for new products and agency partners, while lowering your overhead costs by automating inefficient servicing processes. From advancing our distribution products like Ivans Distribution Platform™, Ivans Bookroll™, and Ivans Marketing Insights™, to servicing products, like Ivans Download™ and Ivans Exchange™, we are making it easier for you and your agencies to work better together.
Growth Opportunities Made Easy
Ivans Distribution Platform has become THE platform for commercial lines distribution. As part of the platform, our market appetite communication capabilities have enabled more than 3.5 million appetite searches per month to more than 40,000 active agency users.
This year, we went live with two new distribution partners, Insurzone and Mylo, expanding the Ivans network to include the thousands of agencies on those platforms. We have also closely partnered with the folks at Tarmika™ to more tightly integrate the two platforms, enabling the latest integration launch of Epic Quotes for Commercial Lines, a single-entry comparative rater natively within Applied Epic® that will make quoting and submissions even easier for you and your agency partners.
And because we know that you need more data insights to better understand distribution trends and growth opportunities, we released new in-product dashboards that deliver deeper insights into agency-specific submission data, including submissions by lines of business, submission status, and more. You can also view appetite and submission trends across all agencies connected to our distribution partners so you can more proactively evaluate your product and distribution strategy to create more opportunities with agency partners.
Even More Insights for Commercial Lines and Personal Lines
Ivans Marketing Insights is unlike anything else in the market, giving carriers and MGAs the data they need to pinpoint opportunities for growth and drill into agency book details, including the states they do business in, their lines of business break down, and premium and account volume for each. This year, we doubled down in a big way and added a personal lines business insights offering in addition to the commercial lines solution delivered last year.
New reports were also added for both lines of business, empowering carriers and MGAs with data insights to drive new business and foster current agency relationships. The new reports include:
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The Yours vs Other report shows ranks for how much business agencies are doing with you versus other carriers.
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Renewal Date report shows how many policies are scheduled to expire each month, enabling you to anticipate renewals and enhance retention rates.
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Policy Size report shows how many policies an agency is writing at each level – micro, small, or mid – to better understand business fit.
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Search Premium allows you to see how much premium each agency has based on the selected search.
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Agency Account/Policy Ratio report identifies which agency partners are performing best at rounding their accounts across your product lines, helping you to prioritize expansion opportunities.
An Enhanced Book Roll Experience
Ivans Bookroll has reduced what used to require many hours spent assessing and processing data in agencies’ books of business to mere minutes.
Enhancements to Ivans Bookroll include:
New carrier interface with updated book roll request, request summary, and completed request page enhances performance and user experience.
Industry standard data framework, ACORD XML 2.12, now available as a data format for commercial book rolls minimizes manual rekeying of data into your policy admin system, as well as risk of errors & omissions.
Bookroll API powers an automated connection to more quickly process large volumes of book roll requests, saving you time and boosting your speed to market.
An Ivans Bookroll landing page for carrier book roll requests and agency responses provides a single place for collaboration and reduces manual back-and-forth efforts and time spent.
Optimized Download Workflows
Ivans Download enables greater agency-carrier connectivity across all lines of business, including the quickly growing market, E&S. We are always improving the go-to portal for managing download connections, Ivans Exchange, so you can continue strengthening relationships with your agency partners and make even more profitable business decisions.
Out of all the enhancements Ivans Exchange saw this year, some the most impactful included:
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Mailbox results now include up to 13 months of transaction data, giving you a deeper historical view into download transactions. -
You can now search your inbox and outbox by agency codes for faster customer service. -
A single transaction file can be exported to more easily evaluate its accuracy and troubleshoot potential data errors.
Spotlight: Guidewire Partnership
Driving Growth Through Deep Integration and Partnership Expansion
With the mission of further connecting carriers and their agency partners, we are excited to offer a deep integration with Guidewire Cloud, connecting the data within PolicyCenter directly to agency management systems and giving agents instant access to policy data and support for digital submissions and quoting. This integration requires minimal development work and makes it easier for you to provide the connected experience your agency partners want faster than ever before, boosting their satisfaction and loyalty. Integrations to ClaimsCenter and BillingCenter are underway and will be available in 2025.
The Agency Customer Success team’s time with agents is focused on:
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12%
Setting up new Ivans Y accounts
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17%
Adding carrier and MGA partnerships
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71%
Assisting with issues, responding to questions, and educating
Success By the Numbers
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18 seconds
Average wait time to chat online with an Ivans support specialist
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10+ years
Average tenure of the Ivans Support management team
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89 years
Collective insurance industry training and software expertise of the Ivans Support team
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230
Service projects completed across 121 clients in the past 12 months
Looking Ahead
The future looks bright for the industry as we continue to deepen connections between carriers, MGAs and their agency partners. We are focused on creating and enhancing our solutions so you can improve agency experiences, reduce manual efforts, and gain greater insights into your business and the industry, so you can ultimately drive profitability now and well into the future.