The Portal Insurance team in front of the USS Alabama at Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama.
Tech allows the people at this Alabama
agency to spend more time with customers
By Dennis H. Pillsbury
Photography by Arturo Paulino
“It sounds simple. You just need to hire great people and give them the tools they need to be successful,” says Bradley Flowers, president of Portal Insurance, an independent agency based in Mobile, Alabama. “This truly gives us the ability to work better and faster than our competitors and to achieve our goal every day of positively impacting people through insurance.”
Bradley started out in business working at a cell phone store while in college. His goal at the time was to become a teacher so that he would have summers off to play golf. “Then a buddy came in and convinced me to sell life insurance,” Bradley explains. “I did fine, but I realized that property/casualty insurance better fit my style.
“So, I got a job working with Alfa Insurance (formerly known as Alabama Farm Bureau Insurance until it changed its name in 1987). The job got me into some boardrooms where I really learned how important insurance was to these people, and how I could have a positive impact on insurance purchasers looking for solutions.
“I’ve always been a customer service guy,” Bradley adds, “and I saw an opportunity to take my technical knowledge into the insurance transaction. I would create ways for technology to enhance the customer experience, primarily by freeing me up so I could spend more time with my clients.
“I saw too many people using tech to replace people,” he notes, “but the really innovative companies were using it for enhancement rather than replacement.”
MBA in running an agency
“In 2017, Scott Howell (agency principal at Alabama-based iProtect) reached out to me with the idea of creating an insurance podcast that we decided would be industry facing, rather than consumer facing,” Bradley recalls. “We found an unwillingness among the people that I knew in the captive industry, where I was working at the time, to share information, while independent agents were willing to share. So all of our guests turned out to be independent agents.
“That gave me real appreciation for the effectiveness of the independent agency marketing system,” he adds, “and it provided me with what really was an MBA in running an agency. I had found the place I wanted to be, and I went home and told my wife that I wanted to start an independent agency. Thankfully, she supported the decision fully.”
On March 1, 2019, Bradley started Portal Insurance completely from scratch. “We were profitable after 10 months,” he says proudly. The name reflects the fact that Mobile is the Port City, but Portal is generic enough that “it allows us to be seen as national in scope, which is important since we now write in about 20 states.
“The agency is built around our goal of positively impacting people through insurance,” Bradley explains. “Our principles reflect that. We care. When action is required, we don’t just act; we take massive action.
“We give more than we take, which means that we are a resource for our clients and prospects regardless of what is being discussed,” he says. “And we play the long game, which means that we never make a sale unless it is right for the customer. In short, we try to live up to the Golden Rule and love our neighbors.”
“The agency is built around our goal of positively
impacting people through insurance. Our principles
reflect that. We care. When action is required,
we don’t just act; we take massive action.”
—Bradley Flowers
President
Portal Insurance
Determining impact
“When we first started, we provided the usual welcome gift to a new customer, without really thinking about it at the time,” Bradley recalls. “However, when we looked over the results of that effort, we found that there weren’t any. We had zero customers responding.”
That needed to change, so they embarked on a program for welcome gifts they called Portal PURE. “We looked for gifts to be personalized, unexpected, real and extraordinary, and this required our people to really get to know our customers,” Bradley explains. “Every producer and service person is responsible for finding out something about the customer and then we send a gift that reflects what we’ve learned.
“Sometimes, it’s easy,” he admits. “One customer took photos for a self-inspection of his property and one of the photos jokingly included a picture of the kitchen sink with a clown mask. So we sent him a clown.”
Importantly, they found that this program did have a positive impact. “We were getting results,” Bradley says. “People really enjoyed and remembered the gifts. It made them feel that they were important to us.
“Now, along with discussing our KPIs at our weekly meetings, we also include the results from our PURE program.”
Texting well-received
Another piece of the agency’s customer-first approach that received positive responses from new customers was the practice of onboarding each new customer with a text message—again, with something that relates to them, as well as a thank you and an introduction to their service person.
“We also ask for a Google review,” Bradley adds, “and we let them know they can text us if they have a need. We’ve received numerous responses saying that they love the fact that they can text us. And, when a text does come in from a customer, it goes to everybody and becomes part of the customer’s file.”
Phone calls that come in also become part of the file. “We use AI to transcribe all of our phone calls and place notes in the customer file that include an AI-assigned customer sentiment (negative or positive),” Bradley explains. “This helps us identify potential problems and take quick action.
“Of course, because when claims arise the customer needs quick response, we handle them ourselves to make certain they are filed in a timely manner,” he notes. This was especially important in 2020 when, despite their prayers for no CATs, Hurricane Sally made landfall in Alabama with maximum sustained winds of 105 to 110 miles an hour.
“The day before the storm hit, we texted every customer an online form or number,” Bradley notes. “If the office lost power, then anyone on our team who still had Wi-Fi became the claims manager for Portal Insurance.” Calls were forwarded and always answered.
“We started filing claims while Sally was still active. We submitted about 600 claims in a day-and-a-half and provided all clients with the name of the adjuster—advising them to text or call us if they hadn’t heard from the adjuster within 24 hours.”
The end result was that most of the agency’s customers’ claims were in process or completed while people who were not insured with them were still waiting to hear from the adjuster. “This also meant that our claims closed very quickly,” Bradley explains.
Team members gather in the agency’s collaborative hub for a meeting. The large space was created to foster open communication and creativity.
AI helps with remarketing
For about a year now, Portal Insurance has been using what Bradley calls “a ton of AI on the back end to make us more efficient. In the area of remarketing, for instance, we had been doing that for every customer. In some ways, that seemed counter-productive, since we were spending money on customers we already had in order to make less on the account when we succeeded in getting a lower premium.
“I was talking to Matt Naimoli (Rough Notes November 2018 cover agency principal) about that and he suggested that we only remarket for those who asked for it or were being non-renewed,” Bradley adds. “I had serious concerns that doing that might hurt us, so I accompanied it with an AI program to look at the results of our remarketing efforts to find out where it made the most sense.” Accounts were put into one of three categories with the remarket being: 1) successful and less expensive; 2) unable to find anything better; or 3) unable to generate a renewal—and we lost the business.
“[We] try to offer a new employee benefit every
year—something a little out of the ordinary that makes their life
a little better. One year we had a person detail their
vehicles every month; another year we added pet insurance—and we still provide it.”
—Bradley Flowers
“AI created a dashboard that cross referenced the results with the amount of increase, to help us focus on those areas where success was most likely,” Bradley explains. “For example, we found that it was unlikely we would find a better option for those people looking at an 8% increase, while those with an 11% jump were worth remarketing.” The result: The agency retention rate went up three points.
“We also use AI to do the remarketing, which for complicated risks also includes the coverages we’re recommending, along with a premium quote.” This proved especially valuable when the agency was approached by an insurtech company looking for cyber and E&O coverage.
“The AI tool took the four offers that we received, summarized what each policy really covered, and provided the premium quote. The company recognized the need for truly robust coverage and actually chose the most expensive coverage because of the AI summary.”
The agency also is using AI to help them with their emails. “There is a certain professional cadence to writing an email that AI is able to simulate for use by all of our people,” Bradley says. “We have a dictation tool on our computers where our people can dictate what they want to say and then AI will create a message and format it so the person can just hit a button and send it along.”
Keeping COIs happy
They’ve also instituted a program that allows mortgage lenders and other partners to know what is happening with each of their referrals. “Internally, I call it the PizzaTracker, because it’s based on a program used by Domino’s,” Bradley says, showing great bravery by admitting that he likes Domino’s Pizza to a transplanted Jersey boy (me) who is still looking for a great pizza—oh, and a real bagel with Taylor ham and cheese, but I digress.
Anyway, the program “provides information on whether we have insured the client they referred, and where in the process it is if we haven’t,” he says. “This has changed the conversations we have with our centers of influence (COIs) from one where they complain that they rarely hear from what is happening with the referrals to thanks for keeping them informed.
“We also make a strong effort to keep our people happy and excited to work here,” Bradley notes. “One thing we do is try to offer a new employee benefit every year—something a little out of the ordinary that makes their life a little better. One year we had a person detail their vehicles every month; another year we added pet insurance—and we still provide it.”
Last year, they added mental health coverage which provided time for team members to talk with a therapist. This year, they are adding Function Health, which provides a program that allows employees to track their health and wellness.
In closing, Bradley points out a unique feature of Portal that has helped it attract young people to the agency: “We are completely Apple-based, so our interface doesn’t look like a spreadsheet. Also, we have a very modern, cool office, which serves as a great recruitment tool.”
The building also includes a rooftop patio, which Bradley uses when explaining insurance to new hires. “I take people up there where you can see most of Mobile and I tell them that everything they see has insurance. It’s a real eye-opener.” The average age of employees at the agency is 33.
Rough Notes is proud to recognize Portal Insurance as our Agency of the Month. Their commitment to getting young people interested in insurance is an important and worthy effort to make certain that the independent agency system has a bright future.
The author
Dennis Pillsbury is a Virginia-based freelance insurance writer.
