Leveraging Insurance Knowledge / Web Dev / Programming (automation)

• Rate - Rate increases (or decreases). Always posted with justification, ie, "Hail losses are up this year." etc. They also typically have a policyholder impact statement which, in percentiles by 5%, show how many policies will show what increases. So if there's 150,000 policies, it'll show 50,000 for 0-5%, 25,000 to 6-10%, etc.
• Rules - each company has different underwriting rules which also need to be publicly available. An example of this is for homeowner's that have an in-home daycare. It's not whether they allow it or not, it's about if they do, what are the rules, ie, 6 kids versus 4 kids limit. That that number include your own children? etc. A simpler rule could be companies having roof age limits, ie, 15 vs 20.
• Forms - actual policy language changes, additions or subtractions. For instance, there was a company just the other day.

• In the more blog and article style posts (vs news), I would write it as "me" as an agent of my "insurance agency" and create that backlink juice.
• Even in the news, like if State Farm posts a 10% rate increase, have a CTA at the end of every piece of news.
• Sell leads by way of the calculators (filter) section; have it narrow down to the companies they qualify for and have them be able to submit. With the carriers that I offer, I would obviously give the lead to myself if it's the best fit from an underwriting rules perspective.
  • Instead of just selling leads to other agents, work with agencies that can give me commission splits (which is legal when you are a licensed agent).
• I'd like to avoid, but I'm not entirely counting out ad placements, either from something like Google Adsense, or affiliate links, or direct advertisements I sell to Michigan-specific companies or rather companies that are targeting Michigan.

kshatriya said:

Don't waste time. Start working on this asap. Insurance is a great niche, very difficult, but you're in a great place to start. You'll need to pump some cash in this endeavour but if it "clicks" then you'll be in a very good state.

Good luck

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Hagiology said:

I have cash, where do I pump it in a “white hat” way where it’s safe, but effective?

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Hagiology said:

Hi everyone,

I am an insurance NERD. I've been in the industry selling insurance for well over a decade now and beyond just "selling" I research and read all things insurance, mostly but not exclusively Michigan-specific but of course there's an overall US / world influence I need to keep track of, too.

I've been just racking my brain that, beyond creating a killer website for my insurance agency that's highly ranked locally, how do I leverage my insurance knowledge to the masses in Michigan?

There is a public database that has all rate, rule, and form changes, here's what that means

• Rate - Rate increases (or decreases). Always posted with justification, ie, "Hail losses are up this year." etc. They also typically have a policyholder impact statement which, in percentiles by 5%, show how many policies will show what increases. So if there's 150,000 policies, it'll show 50,000 for 0-5%, 25,000 to 6-10%, etc.
• Rules - each company has different underwriting rules which also need to be publicly available. An example of this is for homeowner's that have an in-home daycare. It's not whether they allow it or not, it's about if they do, what are the rules, ie, 6 kids versus 4 kids limit. That that number include your own children? etc. A simpler rule could be companies having roof age limits, ie, 15 vs 20.
• Forms - actual policy language changes, additions or subtractions. For instance, there was a company just the other day.

I was thinking about creating authoritative content, like a news website but specifically for Michigan (mostly personal lines) insurance. Beyond just rate, rule and form changes I would also discuss overall trends in Michigan (either directly or tangentially related, like cell phone distraction & driving) in still authoritative, factual style, but a little bit more casual. These would be handwritten.

This is on top of other notifications that insurance companies are mandated to report to this public database, but those are the main ones. I can pretty much automate these and furthermore, I was thinking about building out an API so I could come up with various "Michigan Insurance Calculators." Like in the instance above with the in-home daycare above, have information that would also be in articles, feed into an API where people can fill out basic information about their in-home daycare, and filter out the ones that don't fit the underwriting guidelines (rules) so instead of calling all the top 25 insurance companies in Michigan, they can focus on the 3 or 4 that will actually take them. It really would be a good resource for a lot of people that are in semi-unique situations.

I would also include a glossary / dictionary of insurance terms as well.

Question is, what is the best way to leverage (read: profit) this knowledge? As much as I'd like to post a lot of this content on my agency website, my agency website is more "local" and I don't think I'd get my best results mixing state-wide knowledge for an agency website that is locally based, so here was a few of my ideas of building out content.

• In the more blog and article style posts (vs news), I would write it as "me" as an agent of my "insurance agency" and create that backlink juice.
• Even in the news, like if State Farm posts a 10% rate increase, have a CTA at the end of every piece of news.
• Sell leads by way of the calculators (filter) section; have it narrow down to the companies they qualify for and have them be able to submit. With the carriers that I offer, I would obviously give the lead to myself if it's the best fit from an underwriting rules perspective.
  • Instead of just selling leads to other agents, work with agencies that can give me commission splits (which is legal when you are a licensed agent).
• I'd like to avoid, but I'm not entirely counting out ad placements, either from something like Google Adsense, or affiliate links, or direct advertisements I sell to Michigan-specific companies or rather companies that are targeting Michigan.

I know a lot of this is very specific information and probably sounds like gibberish to most, but if you are able to read through this post, sort of understand where I'm at, and are able to give input, please let me know what you think and if you can add or critique anything.

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