Customizable data analytics platform
built internally by one agency
goes public to help others succeed
By Christopher W. Cook
Back in 2018 and 2019, I wrote a series about the misadventures of Ernie and Oliver, two inexperienced agency owners who had no clue what they were doing and eventually had to close their shop after an E&O claim? Remember those? Yeah, me neither.
Anyway, I hear that the duo has spent the past few years studying up and have opened Version 2.0 of their agency. They’re a little wiser but still need a lot of help. While their client base is growing, the organization of their data is lackluster, with a plethora of reports plugged into randomly stored Excel spreadsheets.
Understanding all the data available to your agency can be challenging, especially if it’s not stored in one convenient location. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure it out, but it helps to have a little premium logic.
The beginning
Premium Logic’s story begins in 2018, when Todd Dailey, the tech firm’s founder and CEO, joined Insurance Management Group (IMG), the May 2022 Rough Notes Agency of the Month.
“The agency had just experienced a period of rapid growth, but the lack of business insights was jeopardizing our ability to effectively support that growth, let alone continue the trajectory,” Dailey says. “I had nearly a decade of experience leading data and analytics teams at Liberty Mutual, so I was charged with the primary goal of transforming IMG into a data-driven agency.
“Despite several months of searching, we struggled to find a flexible, affordable, and intuitive solution, so we decided to build our own. Creating our own allowed us to have an analytics platform that was specific to our needs, which was critical for its effectiveness.”
Todd was joined on the project by his brothers Trent and TJ.
“Trent [IMG’s CEO] was the first user who helped us shape the initial version of the platform,” Dailey says. “TJ’s specialization is marketing and brand strategy. He’s been doing that for a couple of decades and really helped us begin to center ourselves around the client and the potential value proposition.”
Over the next 18 months the platform was built through dozens of iterations with internal agency leaders.
“We fine-tuned the insights they needed to make better decisions, have better conversations, and create better outcomes,” Dailey says. “The solution was built purely for internal purposes, but when comparing notes with industry peers in late 2020, demand surfaced to provide the service externally. Trent has the entrepreneurial mind of the three of us, so when that demand started, he was the advocate to take it to market and help the industry.
“I was fortunate enough to have the right background to solve our problem, but many agencies don’t have that skill set internally. My vision was for small to mid-sized agencies to have the same access to enterprise analytics as larger brokers who have substantial resources to invest in business intelligence.
“From a business value perspective, Premium Logic gives agencies the business analytics needed to thrive in the data-driven world,” Dailey continues. “It was created to save time running reports and cobbling together mediocre insights in Excel and pivot tables; save money by more efficiently managing workloads, performance, and staffing; and drive revenue growth through cross-selling, revenue banding, and accountability scoreboards.”
In the fall of 2023, Josh Millspaugh joined Premium Logic and currently leads client experience and business development; Jerome Macaspac is the team’s lead developer. Brothers Trent and TJ remain partners of the firm but are not currently active in its day-to-day activities.
“[Premium Logic] gives agents and brokers their own custom analytics platform that dovetails with the way they run their business.”
—Todd Dailey
Founder and CEO
Premium Logic
The platform
What does the platform offer and what can be expected in the beginning?
“At the highest level, Premium Logic helps agents and brokers run a more profitable agency through increased revenue growth and reduced expenses by ingesting data from key operational systems and delivering insights,” Dailey says. “Conceptually, it gives agents and brokers their own custom analytics platform that dovetails with the way they run their business.
“We start with a discovery process to understand unique aspects of the agency to inform initial customizations. We do three full iterations with the agency as part of the implementation, reviewing dashboards with agency leaders and customizing however they see fit. We continue to meet with agency leaders on demand (minimum quarterly) to field opportunities to customize and enhance the dashboards to ensure the insights stay relevant over time.
“We’ve found that agencies are unique in many ways,” he continues. “Different leadership styles, different growth aspirations, and different team sizes are just a few of many unique characteristics that will impact what insights are most important to an agency at a given point in time. This is why it’s imperative that analytics platforms are not only tailored to each specific agency but are able to evolve with the agency over time.”
While data can be organized and customized for each agency, it generally fits into one of four modules: agency, carrier, client, and the team (producers and account managers); a fifth module, data quality, helps agencies become aware of any potential quality issues.
“Within each of these top four modules, we have four to six dashboards, customized for every agency, to collectively provide the insights needed to have the right conversations, make better decisions and drive better outcomes within each relationship or entity,” Dailey says. “It’s understanding your metrics and knowing where your pain points are, and then being able to attack those. Without awareness of potential problematic patterns and trends, it’s tough to know where to attack.”
For example, overall agency retention may look normal, but when there is further analyzing by department, producer, or CSR, concerning trends may surface. Revenue banding (the number of customers in a certain revenue range) allows sales leaders and individual producers to understand inefficiencies and opportunity costs in how they are investing their time.
Carrier dashboards highlighting year-over-year carrier performance (number of policies with, revenue generated by, compensation etc.), often highlight certain carriers with retention or compensation gaps that may have gone otherwise unnoticed. Cross-selling (internal and cross departmental) opportunities can also be made available for each individual producer or account manager or as a team.
Speaking of the team, for their well-being, data can track their client activity (how frequently clients are contacting the agency compared with the revenue they generate), and seasonality—the times of year that team members are busier or slower based on workload. Ultimately, any data available in an identified source system (agency management system or otherwise) is in play for analytics, but those are a few of the more common examples.
“Employee retention alone is something that has been a real benefit for us,” Dailey says. “Being able to sit down alongside account managers to share these insights and have conversations has been super meaningful.”
Even with the platform still in its infancy, it has already shown signs of success. “IMG has doubled in size and increased its profitability by 500% in the last five years with Premium Logic,” Dailey says.
“One client was on the doorstep of hiring when they got access to the platform and realized it was a seasonality issue; they saved $60,000 immediately. Another agency saved $50,000 through revenue banding insights that uncovered the fact that they were spending $100,000 to service 1,000 clients that only generated $50,000 in revenue. A third client leveraged the cross-selling dashboards to have a very successful cyber insurance campaign and also generated over two dozen large employee benefits leads from existing commercial clients.
“As a growing firm, we continuously struggle with finding technologies that ‘fit’ us. Premium Logic is very nimble, is always available and understands the broker side of the business.”
—Steve Nicholson
Employee Owner and CEO
Winter-Dent & Company
“Previously, I had to run multiple reports and build endless pivot tables to manipulate the data into what I needed. Now, with just a few clicks in the Premium Logic dashboard, I can accomplish my goals.”
—Sarah Klapperich
Vice President, Client Experience
McClone Insurance
“[Our product] is not necessarily revolutionary from a technology perspective. For us it is more about the basics of providing relevant and actionable insights in a way that is extremely intuitive for agency leaders to digest,” Dailey concludes.
Agency perspective
What do agencies have to say about Premium Logic and their experience with the team and product?
“A trusted agency CEO whom I’ve known for many years introduced me directly to Todd Dailey, and our relationship started building from there,” says Steve Nicholson, employee owner and CEO of Winter-Dent & Company in Jefferson City, Missouri. “As a growing firm, we continuously struggle with finding technologies that ‘fit’ us. Premium Logic is very nimble, is always available and understands the broker side of the business. Todd Dailey is also an agency principal, and his team understands ‘why’ we would need to look at data the way we want to.
“The upfront work of connecting our system to theirs was where a lot
of time was spent. The process allowed us to rethink what we were putting into our agency management system and where we put it. The old data saying of ‘if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out’ couldn’t be truer once you really dive into a project like this.
“Premium Logic allowed us to educate our staff at times as to why it’s important or why it will be in the future to collect certain data points,” he continues. “The training, installation and workflow analysis that was a function of all of this work were handled well and certainly to our satisfaction.”
Nicholson’s firm, Winter-Dent & Company, is 113 years old but, in 2018, it converted to a 100% ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan), meaning its employees are now owners.
“This was a big change, and if you are not able to keep score it’s hard to measure progress in anything you are doing,” Nicholson says. “Premium Logic is a huge tool for us in this area and will continue to evolve into departmental reporting, workload management, cross-departmental communication and soon to be sales management. We are very bullish about the value of data as it helps us celebrate successes and identifies opportunities to improve at a much faster pace.”
For an agency owner contemplating implementing this product, Nicholson says, “You will get out of it what you want to put into your systems. If you want to be able to slice and dice your current data in a way that the current agency management systems at times only try to do, request a demo.”
McClone Insurance in Menasha, Wisconsin (the Rough Notes October 2020 Agency of the Month), is involved with MarshBerry. “Our CEO and CFO were at a MarshBerry Conference several years ago, where they met the team from IMG,” says Sarah Klapperich, McClone’s vice president of client experience. “Todd and his team asked to spend a day at our agency so we could collaborate and share best practices. During that visit, we shared how we operated, and they introduced us to the Premium Logic dashboard.
“Our jaws dropped—it was exactly what we were looking for,” she continues. “The team is super responsive. I love their energy, which aligns perfectly with ours in terms of creativity and adaptability. The experience has been phenomenal.”
As for the product? “The way they were able to meet our wish list within seconds—it was magical,” Klapperich says. “Previously, I had to run multiple reports and build endless pivot tables to manipulate the data into what I needed. Now, with just a few clicks in the Premium Logic dashboard, I can accomplish my goals.
“From an efficiency standpoint, it’s been a game-changer for carrier meetings,” she continues. “Often, carriers drive the meetings—we are at the mercy of their analytics and we went in blind. But now, the dashboards allow us to easily prepare and come into the meetings ready to lead the discussion. We can confidently speak to the risks we’ve placed with them, where we are having success and where we need to improve. It gives us a fresh perspective and helps shape more constructive conversations.”
Klapperich advises agency owners considering the product to be thoughtful and intentional in its customization. “Don’t collect data just for the sake of it. Think carefully about what you want to track, then work closely with their team to build it,” she says. “You have to start with your core operating system, and ensure your team is consistent in how they input data so that the information you’re working with is reliable.
“One of our major focuses for 2023 and 2024 has been data and analytics, helping us make more informed decisions. Trust your gut but ensure the data supports it—Premium Logic has helped us do that,” she concludes.
For more information:
Premium Logic
premium-logic.com
