This article was produced in partnership with Allianz Global Assistance.
Desmond Devoy, of Insurance Business Canada, sat down with Dan Keon, vice president, marketing and insights at Allianz Global Assistance Canada, to talk about the benefits of the AdvisorMax platform and how it can help brokers.
If flying was as easy as Allianz Global Assistance’s (Allianz) new proprietary AdvisorMax platform, you’d hop on a plane more often.
Allianz launched its new digital point of sale platform earlier this year and it is already making the process simpler, easier, and more convenient for its partners.
“We migrated our whole base over, so, 1,000s of brokers that we partner with across the country,” said Dan Keon, vice president, marketing and insights, from his office at Allianz headquarters in Cambridge, Ontario. “So, high volume for sure.”
The program is proprietary and was developed locally.
“We did leverage best practises from some of the global technology that our teams use in the US,” he said. “But really, it was developed specifically for our Canadian brokers and, also, for our Canadian products that we offer in that channel.”
There are unique Canadian features, such as medical screening, with Allianz recently completing an overhaul of the medical questionnaire to make it simpler than ever to use. There are now just three easy questions to answer, down from a form that could previously take between 15 and 20 minutes to complete.
“It is definitely something that our partners are loving,” Keon said.
In the past, medical screening for, say, a Snowbird, an older person looking to vacation down south over the winter months, could be as long as 20 or more questions long, complete with medical jargon.
“It can make both the customer and the broker a bit nervous selling sometimes because they’re worried about answering a question wrong and maybe affecting the claim down the road,” he said. “We worked with our medical consultants internally to develop language that everybody can easily understand.”
Allianz was able to get feedback from brokers and incorporate that information into the creation of the new platform, looking at the selling experience from the broker’s perspective.
“Since launching we’ve had a really good feedback loop with our partners,” he said of the front-end portal and its enhanced features.
And what are brokers and other partners liking the most about the new platform?
They appreciate “how intuitive and user friendly the sales flow is. We really tried to strip it down. We always strongly encourage training to make sure that they know all the ins and outs of the system, but, ultimately, you can come on as a new broker partner without training and sell a policy on this system,” Keon said. “It’s that intuitive.”
It also helps brokers know their products better, which makes them easier to sell. AdvisorMax is also beneficial as a comparative tool, allowing brokers to make side-by-side comparisons of products and benefits, and present options to clients and ultimately recommend the best option for them.
According to one Allianz broker user: “My favourite part of the new portal is the quick comparison of eligible products to sell to your client all on one screen. This also helps with an upsell - a client may not want a select plan but after seeing the price difference between the select and basic medical plan they may change their mind.”
Another function of the program is that it has the capability for annual renewals, making it easier for brokers to retain clients.
“Annual plans are a major opportunity for our broker partners in terms of being able to sell a travel product and having it renew,” Keon said. “Now we’ve introduced automatic renewals on those annual policies, which improves the lifetime value that you can get from your travel insurance customer.”
Keon points out that AdvisorMax is a “foundational” tool in so far as “once you get the right system in place, it makes it that much easier to respond to evolving broker needs, customer needs,” especially during these volatile travel times. “Having that really solid platform in place means that we can spend more time focusing on those customer needs and broker needs, looking at product innovation and ways to respond to those needs.”
AdvisorMax is a key component in Allianz’s digital transformation strategy, allowing brokers to seamlessly scale their business with a top travel insurance and assistance company. The broader transformation will allow more processes to be automated, streamline data exchange, and accelerate time to market. Allianz is also already using digital business intelligence tools and surveys to monitor trends and gain valuable insights into travel insurance needs and purchase patterns.
To find out more about partnering with Allianz Global Assistance, follow the link.
