Presenter:  Jeff Smith, Ohio Independent Agents 

Collecting, analyzing and acting upon data can be overwhelmingespecially with budgets and manpower already exhaustively tapped. But data analytics can be made manageable and affordable and can yield very valuable insights. The Ohio Independent Agents (OIA) saw how independent agencies could do more with the data it already had on hand, so in 2018 it created IntellAgents, an LLC that provides insights for the IA channel. 

OIA gets data from its agents: membership, education, events, consulting, insurance. IntellAgents stores it, cleanses it and uses it. Agencies already trust OIA as an organization and have given the association mountains of agency performance data. OIA leverages it to help agencies grow their business. It is collaborating with independent agent associations in other states and aims to reach 20,000 agencies from 10 states by the end of 2019. 

From its data warehouse, OIA generated a profile of the generational health of agencies in Ohio, broken down by total agents, age of agents, annual premium, etc. It has created business solutions and provided actionable insights that agencies can use to grow, compete better, and make informed business decisions.

One of the products OIA offers is an Agency Valuation Study. Using data from the comprehensive system, we can get a very clear view of what valuations numbers really are, and that can help agencies understand what their market value really is.

• Revenue multiples are an expression of value; earnings multiples are what the agency is actually worth.
• When you start listing out the factors that contribute to valueproducers, large account portion of total business, age of owner, techyou can see which agencies are likely to thrive.
• Two agencies with the same revenue can have totally different market value based on risk factors. OIA measures risk factor data: profit and growth rate, client concentration, carrier concentration, succession planning/ownership profile, management experience, depth of staff, future investments, culture and brand value. That can be expressed as an EBITDA multiple.

OIA also offers the RISE Report, which benchmarks your agency against others by size, growth rate, region, state, etc. It looks at your agencys product mix, employee age distribution and employee compensation and helps you understand where you are in the greater scheme of peers, competitors and higher-tier agencies.

OIA is now working on:

• Agency dashboardinginformation at your fingertips
• Agency insights
• Data management as a service
• Client profilinglead generation
• Predictive analytics.
  
  

It is also working with a third party on building an application programming interface (API) that will allow seamless interaction between crucial systems.