Building pipelines: InsuredMine & Texan Insurance podcast recap

The Insurance Perspectives Podcast involves contributors outside of HawkSoft. The participants' views are entirely their own and may not reflect the views of HawkSoft.

This recap of the Insurance Perspectives Podcast summarizes highlights of the two episodes about HawkSoft partner InsuredMine, where HawkSoft host Kenny Hendricks interviews Tucker Hood of InsuredMine and Rahim Virani of Texan Insurance, which uses the InsuredMine platform.

Tucker and Rahim discuss how pipeline management solutions can work with the agency management system to handle the front end of customer communications using the rich data from the management system. 

In this article:

• Part 1: InsuredMine (Tucker Hood)
  
  • What is InsuredMine's reason for participating in the independent agency channel?
  • What one aspect of InsuredMine draws agencies in and keeps them working with you?
  • How does InsuredMine approach data ownership with regards to your customers?
  • What is the hardest part of working with insurance agencies?
  • What is the best part of working with insurance agencies?
  • How does InsuredMine work with HawkSoft?

• Part 2: Texan Insurance (Rahim Virani)
  • Tell us about your agency
  • What was your agency looking for when you first encountered InsuredMine?
  • What is your agency able to do now with InsuredMine that you couldn't do before?
  • What is one thing you would change about InsuredMine if you could?
  • How would you describe the value that InsuredMine brings to your agency?

Part 1: InsuredMine (Tucker Hood)

Watch the video podcast - Part 1

Question 1: Why does InsuredMine exist? What is your reason for participating in the independent agency channel?

• Kenny Hendricks welcomes Tucker Hood, the head of Sales at InsuredMine, which is a two-way API integration partner with HawkSoft.
  
  
• Tucker Hood describes the agency management system as the back-end solution for the agency, while InsuredMine takes care of the front-end or customer-facing needs, like pipeline management, marketing automation, review management, and more.
  
  
• InsuredMine helps the agency see where someone is in the sales cycle at a glance and communicate with them in the right way, at the right time.

“The agency management system solves the needs of policy binding, commission, and accounting really well, but over the years there's been a great need for a customer platform. InsuredMine wraps around the agency management system and allows HawkSoft to do what you do really well on the policy management side, and we become the front end for the independent agency.”

Question 2: If you had to pick one aspect of InsuredMine that draws in and keeps agencies working with you, what would that be and why?

• Tucker mentions that InsuredMine is known for its simple pipeline management features, which allow agencies to build and manage automated pipelines for sales, renewals, and more.
  
  
• Rahim Virani adds that the differentiator that impressed him was how customizable the pipelines are, allowing their agency to create workflows for nearly any process they want to manage more efficiently.
  
  
• Rahim also appreciates the reporting features, which help him have better visibility into the activities that are taking place and see where contacts are in the process.
  
  

“Whatever process that you want to try to manage, you can do it within the system to get that standard operating procedure in place. What's really unique about it from our vantage point is that if you can dream it up, the system is so flexible that you can create that process so that everybody in your organization is doing the same thing.”

Question 3: How does InsuredMine approach data ownership with regard to your customers?

• Tucker mentions that InsuredMine has an extensive privacy policy, is SOC II compliant, and has many data security measures in place.
  
  
• InsuredMine’s stance is that the agency always has the rights to their own data, and InsuredMine erases the data in 30 days or less after an agency leaves them.
  
  
• Rahim appreciates that InsuredMine states clearly in their contract that the agency is the owner of the data.
  
  

“At the end of the day, it's your data. If you ever choose to say goodbye to us, you would have the rights to your own data. We would destroy it in 30 days or quicker, if you so choose. So we believe that's how we should run things, and we find agencies agree with that.”

 

Question 4: What is the hardest part of working with insurance agencies?

• Tucker started his career in the San Francisco area working with bleeding-edge software companies, so he admits he was surprised when he moved into the insurance world to find that the industry has been slow to adopt new technology.
  
  
• One of the biggest obstacles he experiences is simply resistance to change, and helping agencies to understand that it’s necessary to help their business grow.
  
  
• Rahim observes that independent agencies take longer to make software decisions because agencies are built on trust, and they want to find a partner they trust enough to help them through the difficult process of change.
  
  
• Kenny asks how technology partners can help agencies overcome this hurdle, and Rahim emphasizes the importance of hearing the success stories of other agencies, because they trust others who are facing the same issues.
  
  
• Tucker adds that technology should be thought of as a vehicle to help an agency get where they want to go. An agency will get the most value out of a tech solution if they have already have a solid idea of what they want to accomplish. Otherwise, a tech solution is similar to driving a nicer car, but you still won’t get to your destination faster unless you have a map of where you want to go.
  
  

“There's always going to be those one-off situations that exist. But if you can look at 100 instances of something and 90% of the time it's the same, that's your process. Make your technology work for that 90%. If you're trying to fit it to 100% of the time, you're going to keep spinning your wheels.”

Question 5: What is the best part of working with insurance agencies?

• Tucker says his least favorite element (the technology lag) also feeds into his favorite element, because agencies with the least automation in place at the outset see the most drastic success with their solution, which he loves contributing to.
  
  
• Tucker also appreciates how much independent agencies focus on their communities and their clients, and that they treat their clients as people rather than numbers.
  
  

“I may talk to an agency that has never seen a CRM, or one that's integrated into an agency management system, and some of the things that we do are kind of mind blowing for them. It's like giving a kid candy for the first time, to be able to see that kind of wow. Alongside the personal relationship that you develop, it's what makes the job fun.”

Question 6: How does InsuredMine work with the HawkSoft management system? 

• Tucker explains that InsuredMine utilizes the client and policy data in HawkSoft to move contacts through their pipelines at the correct time.
  
  
• Thanks to the two-way integration between HawkSoft and InsuredMine, when you update something in HawkSoft, it will be updated in InsuredMine as well.

Part 2: Texan Insurance (Rahim Virani)

Watch the video podcast - Part 2

In this episode:

• Tell us about your agency
• What was your agency looking for when you first encountered InsuredMine?
• What is your agency able to do now with InsuredMine that you couldn't do before?
• What is one thing you would change about InsuredMine if you could?
• How would you describe the value that InsuredMine brings to your agency?

Question 1: Tell us about your agency. How long have you been in the business, and how did you get into the business? Do you have any specializations? What gets you excited about insurance?

• Rahim Virani has been president of Texan Insurance for over a decade, and the agency has been using HawkSoft since 2008.
  
  
• Rahim and his brother bought the agency back in 2012 without having any background in insurance. He had past experience as an attorney, which helped him understand insurance law and contract law.
  
  
• The agency had about 10 employees when they acquired it, and has grown to 85 employees through a number of acquisitions, plus organic growth.
  
  
• The agency is 90% personal lines and 10% commercial, with Rahim wanting to grow the commercial side further in the coming years.
  
  
• What excites Rahim about insurance is that every day is different, and that there is constant change and evolution in the industry.

“The great thing about insurance that no two days have ever been the same, especially for an agency like ours that’s looking to grow and be on the cutting edge of things. When I see upheaval [in the industry], I get really excited about it because I think those moments are when times change.”

Question 2: What was your agency looking for when you first encountered InsuredMine?

• Rahim originally had a relationship with InsuredMine because he had many discussions with InsuredMine CEO Raution while Rahim was working on building out his own CRM for his agency using Salesforce.
  
  
• Eventually Rahim was frustrated with the inability to integrate all his technology seamlessly, and the cost and effort it took to make development changes. At that point he started looking for an insurance-specific CRM that could do the same things out of the box.
  
  
• One of the things that drew Rahim to InsuredMine was how versatile and customizable InsuredMine’s system is.
  
  

“It's like a blank canvas. You can make it whatever you want. But in order to do that, you really have to have a really clear vision and a clear technology understanding of what the system can do.”

 

 

Question 3: What is your agency able to do now with InsuredMine that you couldn't do before?

• Rahim loves how much more seamless and instantaneous the integration with HawkSoft is than it was with his previous system.
  
  
• The agency has a focus on documenting everything in HawkSoft, and he appreciates that he can use InsuredMine to automate sales and service communications as well as document them back into HawkSoft.
  
  

“With the two-way integration, we can make sure that the automation we have with InsuredMine ends up back in HawkSoft, and we can kick off all these automations that allow us to basically simplify our sales and service processes to where it's really hands-off for our employees.”

Question 4: What is one thing that you would change about InsuredMine if you could?

• Rahim notes that his suggestion is more for the Insurtech industry as a whole, but he would like to see more data mobility, allowing him to more easily integrate his data between different systems.
  
  
• He would like to see a world where he can extract and view data insights from all the different systems he uses in one place to tell a complete story.
  
  
• Tucker Hood agrees that it’s more important than ever for agencies to have tools to understand their profitability and which actions are driving the most success. He mentions InsuredMine is putting a lot of development resources into their reporting dashboards.
  
  

“In this environment you're really having to learn more about your business than you had to before to understand what is driving the results. You have to make really critical decisions, like how much staff you need to maintain that book of business. The data is there. It's just having access to that data when and how you want it that's really going to be that game changer.”

Question 5: How would you describe the value that InsuredMine brings to your agency?

• Rahim describes InsuredMine as an important part of the agency that is vital to their success.
  
  
• He appreciates the flexibility InsuredMine allows him to create any kind of process for his agency and ensure it happens in a systematic way for all clients.
  
  
• He feels InsuredMine helps his agency work in the way that’s best for them, rather than forcing them to adhere to a set structure.
  
  
• He also values the close collaboration between InsuredMine and HawkSoft to make the integration better not just for his agency, but for everyone.
  
  
• Tucker adds that because InsuredMine doesn’t rely heavily on PE or VC money, customer feedback is what drives product development, similar to HawkSoft.

“I look at InsuredMine as an integral part of who we are as a company. We literally build things around that system, just like we do around HawkSoft. The technology stack within your organization becomes extremely vital to the success of your business.”