Take down the sticky notes

I spent twenty-six years on the carrier side, and for most of them I could tell you how an agency ran its renewals by when its submissions arrived. Some agencies sent everything six weeks out, in a steady trickle. Most sent a flood in the last ten days of every month. A few sent renewals after the policy had already expired and asked us, politely, to backdate.

The difference was never talent. It was whether the agency had a system that did not depend on somebody looking at a wall.

What the wall is for

The sticky notes, the spreadsheet with the red cells, the account manager who simply remembers: they all exist to answer one question. What expires soon, and has anyone started on it? That is a good question. The trouble is that a wall only answers it when someone stands in front of it, and the weeks when nobody does are exactly the weeks when everybody is busy.

A window instead

A renewal window is a rule, not a reminder. Ours is 45 days. Every morning at six, every policy that has just entered the window is pulled from the management system, whether or not anyone is thinking about it. Three things then happen to each one.

1. It is re-rated with the carrier, using the schedule as it stands that morning, not as it stood at the last renewal.
2. It is compared with the expiring policy: premium, limits, anything on the schedule that changed mid-term.
3. It is sorted. If the premium moved less than 10% and nothing else changed, it is queued for the carrier. Otherwise it waits for an account manager.

At Thornbury Group in Omaha, 312 renewals came through the window in August. Nineteen needed a person. The other 293 were re-rated, summarized for the insured and queued without anyone opening them.

Why 45 days

We tried 30 and 60 before settling. At 30 days, a renewal that needs remarketing has about three working weeks, which is tight if the first carrier declines. At 60, carriers often cannot rate yet, because their renewal filings for the period are not loaded. Forty-five is the earliest date at which nearly every carrier we connect to will return a real number.

It also changes the conversation with the insured. A summary that arrives six weeks before expiry reads as service. The same summary four days before expiry reads as a bill.

If you want to try it by hand first

You can run a window without us for a month, and I would encourage it, because it shows you where your book actually is.

• Each Monday, export everything expiring 45 to 52 days out. Not “this month.” A rolling week.
• Split the list in two: accounts where nothing has changed, and accounts with a claim, a schedule change or a carrier appetite problem.
• Work the second list first. It is the short one.

Most agencies that do this find the second list is under 10% of the total. That is the real size of the renewal problem. The wall made it look ten times larger, because the wall cannot tell a renewal that needs thought from one that only needs doing.

The Omaha office took its notes down in April. Somebody framed the last one.

When the routine ones are handled before breakfast, renewals stop being a season the office braces for. They become a short list an account manager reads with coffee. That is all a system needs to do.