Argo Group’s Ascend with Argo (AWA) program is designed to help the insurance firm connect with and develop early career brokers, including including U.S. underwriters and business unit learders with one to five years of industry experience. Argo developed the sales enablement program to better position its underwriting team to expand existing relationships and initiate new ones in support of top- and bottom-line growth.
Program Details
The program has three main components:
- Education
- Insights
- Connections
Through the Education component, AWA seeks to provide ongoing industry-specific learning and development (L&D) opportunities for new brokers. The program offers live and on-demand Webinars on industry and professional development topics as a convenient way to learn from Argo leaders. A subset of Argo’s external Website serves as a dedicated AWA resource center to house all materials, including on-demand Webinars and training materials, content articles and videos, and Webinar signups. All Argo employees may access this content.
The Insights component seeks to refresh the perception of the insurance industry by giving early career brokers a behind-the-scenes look into this rewarding and exciting career. A Shadow Day Program—pairing Argo employees with brokers—was launched to give brokers a firsthand look at a day in the life of an underwriter, and also to provide them knowledge on what they need to do to help win a new client while getting the right kind of information to the underwriting company.
The Connections component helps foster relationships with Argo employees and clients. This is done through networking events at unique venues and key industry conferences. A campaign also was implemented awarding underwriters and brokers scholarships to attend educational seminars together hosted by an industry association.
Upon initial enrollment into AWA, a drip e-mail campaign is sent outlining what to expect from the program and highlighting select learning and development content pieces. In addition, e-mails are sent to those enrolled in the program to notify them of upcoming training and development opportunities, including live Webinars and events.
Key program updates are reviewed as needed during U.S. Executive Strategic Planning Meetings, and program key performance indicators (KPIs) are included in a quarterly scorecard for the leadership team. Campaigns also are developed in Salesforce, Argo’s customer relationship management tool, to show client engagement and track potential sales; this is accessible by business unit presidents and underwriters.
Results
To date, some 1,270 participants have enrolled in the program. Webinar views exceed 13,000. Client satisfaction with the program content is at 95 percent, with the majority stating they would recommend the program to a colleague and engage with future content. The program has generated new leads for underwriters, who note that AWA has effectively helped them build/maintain relationships. An analysis of Level 4 data shows that for highly engaged distribution partners vs. low engaged partners, new business insurance submissions in 2020 were 260 percent higher and the premium was 167 percent higher.
