When Life Gives You Lemonade

There is a new entrant into the property and casualty industry, poised to take market share away from traditional insurance companies, called Lemonade.  But Lemonade isn't insurance companies!

They are a technology company focused on disrupting traditional insurers by making it possible for consumers to distribute their risk to others without the overhead costs of insurance, which is much, much cheaper.  As they disrupt insurance companies, they will also, of course, disrupt (put out of business) insurance agents.

Feel like you just bit into a lemon?

The truth is that even if this new business or the other rapidly proliferating insurance industry disrupters is successful, it's not likely they will put everyone out of business.   They will put many traditional agents into another line of work if they don't respond.    What will be required to survive and thrive in a future of increased competition and rapid disruption?

I believe there are four critical survival and success factors agents determined to have a positive future competing with Lemonade and others must pursue:

• Superior business operations and cost control
• Constantly improving customer experience
• Focus on deepening customer relationship as a business model (not price driven transactional model)
• Selling more products to customers to improve stickiness
• Alignment with larger distribution organizations (like OAA/SIAA)

In my next several posts, I will explore why each of these is critical to survival and why focusing on them can lead to success as technology gives us Lemonade.