Errors and omissions insurance can help protect your agency, but even when you’re insured, it’s always better to take steps to avoid errors and omissions trouble in the first place. One way you can do that is by creating and maintaining consistent policy measures in your agency. Take a look at what you need to know about why consistent policy can help you avoid errors and omissions and how to set a consistent policy for your agency.
Practice Makes Perfect
The first reason consistent policy can help you avoid E&O trouble is also one of the simplest reasons: the more you do something in the same way over and over again, the better you get at doing that thing. According to the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas, 90% of E&O claims are the result of an error rather than an omission. And errors are more likely to occur when navigating something new and unfamiliar rather than following a tested formula that one is familiar with.
To put it simply, consistent policies and practices in your agency help ensure that everyone is following the same policy and knows what to do in a given situation. In a consistent environment, there’s more certainty about the right move to make in any given situation; therefore, there is less danger of making an inadvertent error.
Measure Your Success
Knowing what works and what doesn’t work is important for your overall success. You need metrics to let you know when current practices are working and when you need to make a change. But in order for those metrics to be useful, you need something stable to measure.
Inconsistent policies disrupt your measurements. Metrics are useful, but if they’re not measuring the results of policies that are consistent over time, they can’t tell you much that you can use to improve your agency’s policies. You not only need to set policies that are consistent, you need to maintain them over a period of time so that you can accurately measure how they’re working. This doesn’t mean that you can’t make changes or even major overhauls to a policy when warranted, but it’s usually better to give a policy time to succeed or fail before implementing changes.
Stay on Message
You need the protection of E&O insurance, but you should also avoid inconsistencies that lead to E&O problems.
An important aspect of avoiding E&O trouble is ensuring that your clients trust your judgment and your practices, and that means delivering a clear and consistent message. Clients notice inconsistencies and confusing or contradictory messaging puts them on their guard.
It’s far easier to maintain clear communication with clients if your policies are consistent. Your agents and staff who are responsible for messaging can be confused by unclear or inconsistent policies, and that will show in their messaging.
The right policies can help you reduce errors and omissions, but you still need to be protected by E&O insurance. American Agents Alliance offers the protection that you need. Contact us to find out more about E&O insurance.
