Accelerate Insurance Policy Sales with Electronic Signatures

For insurance agencies, digital engagement is rapidly becoming a must-have. Consumers have grown increasingly used to transacting online, especially after the onset of the pandemic, and competition from digitally-native Insurtech firms continues to disrupt established distribution channels. To address these trends, traditional agencies must wed their comparative advantages in personal service and expertise with the exceptional ease of use and access inherent to the digital channel.

Those agencies that have invested in innovation are improving the customer experience, enhancing agent satisfaction and growing their book of business. According to Applied Systems, agencies that have embraced digitization see a 15% increase in organic growth and 158% higher revenue per employee.

Indeed, many agencies recognize these potential gains and have already embarked on their digital journey. In fact, 61% of all U.S. agencies that responded to a recent survey have a digital strategy in place, with 85% of them focused on implementing their strategies within one to five years.

Reducing friction is key to the customer experience

Superior customer experience is the ultimate goal in insurance, and it starts with a seamless application process. With the DocuSign Agreement Cloud for Insurance, agencies can make it easy for consumers to complete policy applications, review coverage details, and sign disclosures from their mobile devices in a matter of minutes.

To begin the application process, agents can send agreements to their customers in their preferred digital channel via SMS delivery. Once customers open these forms on their mobile device, they no longer need to worry about pinching and zooming —with responsive signing, they can read forms that fit their screen like a glove. Longer documents can even be collapsed into consumable “smart” sections for easier navigation. With these capabilities, agencies can ensure that policy agreements are easy for customers to read, complete, and digest.

For policies that are more complex, customers may want to review policy agreements with their agents in real-time prior to signing. With eSignature for Zoom, customers can virtually sign agreements, face-to-face with their agents, resulting in both a faster binding experience while building trust and loyalty with their agent.

Digital engagement doesn’t start and end with policy applications, and agencies can continue to enhance the customer experience throughout the lifecycle. For example, in case of a claim, customers can easily attach and submit photos of their vehicles and other property to accident intake forms, utilizing Drawing capabilities to clearly indicate areas of damage and  eliminate unnecessary back-and-forth.

Lastly, throughout these touchpoints, agencies can seamlessly integrate authentication and verification checks to confirm signer identity using options like KBA, ID Verification, and more.

Empower your agents to do what they do best – sales!

While providing customers with a user-friendly experience is critical, ensuring a frictionless and productive agent experience is every bit as important. With the same digital agreement tools, the time an agent spends on gathering customer data, waiting for agreement completion, chasing customers for follow-up, and correcting inaccurate or incomplete data can be reduced or eliminated by as much as 40% according to recent DocuSign research. Agents are able to clearly see whether a document has been signed, and can track the status of multiple agreements across their customer base through automatic reminders.

Additionally, with advanced workflow logic, they can easily attach welcome letters or supplemental documents to the policy packages they send out, and route relevant agreements back to carrier with visibility control settings.

Agencies can unlock further efficiencies by integrating DocuSign eSignature with their agency management systems. With pre-built connectors to systems like Applied Epic or Vertafore, agents can avoid the hassle of manually uploading and downloading documents.

DocuSign is here to support your digitization goals

DocuSign has worked with over 1,400 insurance agencies across the country, helping them to deliver a winning experience to their customers and agents.

For example, AAA of Washington leveraged DocuSign eSignature to reduce the time to complete a new business application by 85%.

“We’re actually selling more than we did prior to DocuSign,” says Chris Lavin, Field Agency Sales Specialist at AAA of Washington. “After six months of data, we were able to show that the agents who used DocuSign sell more business because they have more time to sell.”

Goosehead Insurance, one of the fastest-growing personal lines insurance brokers in the country, implemented an integrated DocuSign-Salesforce solution to streamline its sales process. With this solution, the carrier reduced turnaround time by 85%, eliminated not in good order (NIGO) forms from an average of 25-30% of documents down to zero, and reduced the average time spent by an agent by one full hour.

And at the onset of the pandemic, Downeast Insurance transformed its operations and achieved lasting efficiency gains, enabling it to spend more time closing new deals and less time tracking down policyholder signatures.

“When COVID hit and we closed our doors, DocuSign saved our lives,” says Stacy Johansen, President, Downeast Insurance. “If it weren’t for the ability to get an electronic signature, we wouldn’t have written half the new business we did last year....April, May, June...those were some of our highest producing months in 2020—and it's because we could just DocuSign everything.”

The digital revolution has arrived, and insurance agencies must embrace it in order to serve customers’ and agents’ evolving demands, reduce sales cycle times and enhance operational efficiency. The time has come to accelerate your digital journey and supercharge your trajectory of growth.

To learn more about our DocuSign solutions for insurance agencies, view this on-demand webinar and learn more about how Downeast Insurance accelerated its business in this case study.