Angelyn is a CPA and has earned her CPCU as an independent agent, and serves as Chair on the Agents Council for Technology in Bay St. Louis, MS.
Angelyn and her husband were agents who lost their office during Katrina. Their story is told in a 2005 issue of Guidepost Magazine. Angelyn is a well-known speaker and author in the independent agency network, notably for her presentations concerning disaster preparedness, agency interface and technology, and the use of social media as an agency marketing tool. She is a member of the AUGIE users group, and a key facilitator in creating agency technology solutions with vendors and carriers through ACORD.
Key takeaways from Angela's time with PICA include:
• Carriers that use the independent agency distribution channel need to work to provide the technological tools agents need to ensure customers have a good experience.
• Preemptive communications are important, including communications prior to tornado, hurricane, or ice storm seasons.
• Anything a carrier can do to make the process simpler, easier to access, or takes advantage of technology is greatly appreciated and will be used by progressive agents.
• The use of SM in disasters are becoming more and more prominent. How to find people, where to go, how to file a claim...Agents are using more mobile applications
• Tech-savvy agents - and there ARE many of them - are looking for ways and reasons to contact clients. Angelyn proposes that carriers provide agents with information about a particular product, particular customer profile, and let agents mine their data in their agency management system.
• When carriers have a change in appetite, what's important is how that is presented. Please provide talking points for the agent to use with the customer and make the material consumer-focused.
• Angela feels that cost estimators are a frustrating "waste of time" for agents. They feel like they know the neighborhoods and underwriting should have authority to be flexible with values.
• More agents are engaging in Social Media. The ACT website provides sample SM policy language for agents.
• She would like to see more carriers step up and engage in discussion groups on LinkedIn and ask agents to join in.
• In summary, carriers would do well to build tools, create opportunities, and develop products that will help agents sell.
Between the agent panel and Angelyn's presentation, the group became very exposed to the "other end of the pipeline". It is important for internal folks, communicators especially, to keep an external perspective and keep in touch with the roles that independent agents have in their communities.
It is eerily ironic how the Joplin disaster fell so close to this being fresh in my mind. I understand even better now what Kay meant when she explained how you had to use a porta potty when you saw one because there might not be another for blocks. I understand better, as Commissioner Donelon explained, that the money from insurance companies returning back into a community following a disaster brings an economy and a business district back to life.
I understand better how agents that painted INSURANCE on the sides of their buildings in spray paint were God-sends to those wandering the streets without a single personal belonging.
And as I watched news feeds from Facebook and Twitter direct people to shelters, give instructions on how to volunteer, search for missing loved ones, I understand better how our world is changing, and that we truly do live in a world and work in an industry full of compassion and human goodness.
If I was skeptical about this business of insurance when I began my career at Cameron Insurance Companies 5 years ago, then a one-two punch of New Orleans Lower 9th Ward and the Joplin Tornado has made me a believer.
