Digital payments solutions make the premium collection process easier for staff and insureds alike, but many agency stakeholders are still hesitant to adopt their own payments platform. There are a lot of myths around these platforms, like how they work and even if they are needed, that bring agencies to a standstill. Let's debunk some of the biggest myths that are holding agencies back from transforming their premium payment processes.
Myth: My clients are fine with writing premium checks and doing things manually. I don't need to offer a modern, online checkout experience with flexible payment options.
Fact: Times are changing. Today's consumers expect a quick and easy online experience when paying for products or services, with the ability to pay anytime, anywhere. This includes paying for their insurance premiums and agencies need to keep up if they want to keep their clients happy.
Using a digital payments solution gives your customers a safe, convenient way to pay their premiums online from any device. They have the choice to pay with ACH, credit or even pay by text, providing flexibility to pay the way they choose. There is still skepticism around offering credit as payment methods, since the transaction fee would need to be passed onto the insured. Many agencies only offer ACH for this reason, but in my experience of talking to agents, 40% of their customers would like to choose credit cards as their payment option, even if they have to pay the transaction fee. Giving customers the modern e-commerce shopping cart experience and payment methods they're looking for is key to keeping them happy.
Adopting a digital payments solution allows for easy, integrated premium financing. The workflows around financing require multiple steps and stakeholders. They're often time-consuming and prevent insureds from reaping the benefits. Utilizing a digital payments platform that embeds premium financing makes it a viable option for your agency and allows you to offer even more options for your customers to pay their premiums.
You may be thinking, "Flexibility is great, but is it safe?" Let's take a look at our second myth.
Myth: Checks are more secure than a digital payments solution that can't keep sensitive information safe.
Fact: Although check use is declining, check fraud is rising, largely due to sophisticated app software allowing fraudsters to easily grab information for deviant purposes. Digital payments solutions leverage state-of-the-art security measures to help you safeguard data integrity and avoid fraud.
Managing checks and cash at your accounting team's desks risks exposing client payment details and creates a large margin of human error when counting and reconciling non-digital payments. Online payments solutions allow you to tailor security and user permissions uniquely to your internal operating structure. This ensures each user has visibility only to the accounts and payments pertinent to their role and eliminates the physical counting and data entry process. Payments are automatically applied, and activities are synced and tracked to support the appropriate auditing method and meet compliance requirements.
This leads us to our next myth…
Myth: My accounting staff has a fool-proof system for manually reconciling payments quickly.
Fact: In reality, manually reconciling payments is time-consuming and opens your agency up to data entry errors.
Digital payments platforms automate the accounts receivable process and reduce internal workloads by up to 50%. This is possible by integrating the platform with your agency management system, enabling data to flow from the payments platform directly to the client's account. This allows for auto-matching against existing general ledger receipts, reducing the manual, error-prone work normally associated with this reconciliation process.
No matter how organized your accounting team is or how great of a system they have in place to manually reconcile payments, a digital solution will make them more efficient so that your agency can settle payments faster and drive a more profitable book of business.
Getting started
Now that you know the very real benefits of adopting a digital payments solution, it is time to dispel the final myth: Even if I wanted to adopt a digital payments solution, it would be too expensive and time-consuming to implement.
Sure, there are start-up costs, but those are easily mitigated when you consider the cost of the labor and time that's being saved by automating the process.
Choosing the right technology partner will make implementation a breeze. They can help you get up and running in no time so that your agency can reap all of the benefits of a digital payments solution.
