Many insurance agencies have not yet formalized their lead scoring system. This is a worthwhile endeavor for all agencies, and one which should be revisited every year, while tracking the return on investment of their marketing programs.

What is lead scoring? It is a methodology used to rank prospects against a scale, and then assign a value to determine interest level and distribution. For example, let’s say a trucking insurance lead appointment arrives at your agency. This lead is with an owner of 15 power units, they use company drivers, and they are unhappy with their carrier. Perhaps your lead scoring system falls on a 1 to 10 scale, and this lead is scored an 8. What might receive a higher score? And what types of leads are outside of profile, and what score would they receive? Perhaps prospects need to score an 8 to appear on your producer scorecards.

Is the lead distributed to producers by territory? Does your lead handling process vary by type of lead, product or prospect? For example, are commercial leads separated by large and small business, by industry or product? Are benefit leads parsed by groups over and under 50? And does your agency have a tracking system in place to determine how many leads showed for the appointment, moved into the pipeline, received quotes and ultimately convert into new business?

Salespeople, sales managers, producers and other business people often refer to prospects in vague terms such as: new, warm, hot, cold, likely, qualified, etc. These terms do little to better understand a sales pipeline or convey likelihood of purchase to other members of the team. Agencies can consider creating a simple prospect scorecard to resolve this issue and quantify their lead scoring. Formalizing lead scoring offers benefits such as:

Helps Producers create ideal attributes to form a buyer persona
Creates a simple numeric system to leverage your buyer persona
Assigns numeric values to rank your best prospects
Creates a simple qualification acronym to determine likelihood to close

What should be included in a prospect scorecard?

Use a prospect scorecard to quantify your approach to pipeline building. Some attributes of your ideal client might include revenue, growth rate, client type (business or consumer) and market niche. For example, are you targeting companies with $5m to $10m in revenue? Are your best prospects fast-growing firms, trucking companies, manufacturers or consumers?

If you’re selling to consumers, are they high net worth, middle-income, millennials or senior citizens? Are your prospects in a specific niche market such as banking, insurance, biotech, consulting, education, etc.? Create a scorecard with your ideal attributes and a customized qualification abbreviation to help you determine if you’re selling to an in-profile prospect.

Insurance agencies and brokers seeking to get to the next level with their insurance marketing and lead generation, but lacking the internal resources to achieve their marketing goals, can reach out to a proficient insurance agency marketing firm.

With health and diseases becoming a major issue these days around the world, it has become A LOT more important to have more and more coders involved in the medical field for insurance. But what is medical coding? A medical coder, clinical coding officer, or diagnostic coder are professionals involved in the health care sector who analyze clinical documents and using proper classification systems, assign standard codes to them. They provide medical coding guidelines and suggestions to help regulate the ways doctors, nurses, and other medical staff provide care for their patients. There are three main types of medical coding:

1) ICD (International Classification of Diseases): These are codes used for describing the cause of illness, injury, or death.

2) CPT (Current Procedural Terminology): These deal with anesthesia, surgery, pathology, radiology, measurement procedures, and new technological changes in the medical field.

3) HCPCS Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System): These include outpatient hospital care, medical aid, and Medicare.

Let us look at some points as to why coding is necessary for the medical field.

DATA SYSTEMS
When the coding is paired with the data systems of the hospitals, a powerful tool is made. By doing so, a large number of data from various hospitals, clinics, and other sources are stored, accessed, and used from one large online data system. This implementation helps in the transfer of any patient’s data from any hospital to another for any medical purpose. This information helps doctors to be more connected and make wiser decisions, especially in cases involving the life and death situation of the patient.

PATIENT CARE

Coding is very much required for reimbursements, which include submitting medical claims with insurance companies and bills between insurers and patients. The transfer of information for bill related purposes requires medical records, patient’s medical needs, lab results, pathology records (if any), and any other related documents. Appropriate payment is possible only when the required diagnostic codes are put in place, which also means to verify in case the medical claim is denied by the insurance company.

REGULATIONS

Medical billing and coding fall under the rules and guidelines of many countries and states. Coders in this field are also responsible for protecting the privacy of the patients and their families. They are supposed to take safeguards to preserve the confidential details concerning the patient and his/her medical background in a safe place. Electronic medical records fall under the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) codes issued by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Medical coding analysts are in the front line in healthcare data analytics. They work in many types of healthcare setups and not necessarily in hospitals and clinics. Their valuable service is very functional for research and development in the medical field.

A few weeks ago, a prospective client approached our company seeking Intellectual Property Coverage. He did not fully understand the coverage but was adamant that a policy be issued as quickly as possible. Of course this raised some red flags. Upon further discussions, it was noted that his software company was being sued for copyright infringement from a US based company. Since there was a pending litigation in place, we were unable to assist in providing coverage and suggested he contact law firms that specialize in Intellectual property disputes. This unfortunate incident could have been avoided if his current insurance broker and the client took the necessary time to fully understand the business model and possible exposures. The policy issued to this client was a standard CGL policy covering premises liability and specifically excluded trademark, patent and copyright infringement. In today’s fast paced & uncertain economic environment, intellectual property suits involving infringement of trademark, copyright and patents are being filed and litigated at alarming rates with crippling costs to both parties involved.

So what exactly is Intellectual Property? It can be broken down as follows:

Industrial property – includes inventions (patents), trademarks & industrial designs
Copyright – includes literary & artistic works such as articles, novels, drawings, paintings, designs.

These exclusive legal rights allow the owners of intellectual property to prosper from the property they have created, thus allowing a financial incentive for the creation and investment in their intellectual property. However, many new start-ups in addition to small and medium sized companies do not fully understand their benefits or potential implications. These organizations may have very valuable rights but are unable to use them effectively while others are unintentionally violating intellectual property rights of others without being aware of costly legal ramifications.

Some important terminology was used above and should be explained further.

Patents – Cover new inventions including process, machine, manufacture or any new and useful improvement of an existing invention.

Trade-marks- Provide exclusive rights to word(s), symbols and designs to distinguish goods or services from others in similar marketplace.

Copyright – Only the copyright owner, often the creator of the work, can produce, reproduce, or grant permission to others to do so.

As technology moves ahead at lightning speed, it has made it increasingly easy to reproduce countless types of materials that are subject to copyright. Companies must be very careful not to infringe on the rights of others. Penalties for trademark, patent and copyright infringement have become very costly and will damage the reputation of these companies on a world wide scale. Up until the mid 1990′s, the primary assets of most companies was their building, equipment, stock etc. Not anymore. Although these items still are very valuable, intellectual property, computer data, customer information are just as valuable and could lead to financial hardship if they are not protected with proper security measures and specific insurance coverage’s.

When dealing with the various forms of IP, it is advisable to seek out a lawyer/law firm that specializes in copyright, patents, trademarks, or trade secrets. They should fully understand your business model and your technology as well as you do while being able to explain the legal issues in this complex field in clear, practical language that you can understand.

Another important way to protect IP is to obtain Intellectual Property Insurance. This coverage protects companies for copyright, trademark or patent infringement claims arising out of the company’s operation. An Intellectual Property policy will pay the costs to defend you if someone tries to claim the rights to the same business model, process, or application. As long as the company is not aware of any pending litigation, infringements or violations, one can apply for insurance to protect your trademark or patent. Very few standard insurance policies protect businesses from loss or damage to their intellectual property. Similar to seeking out a prudent lawyer, it is just as important to seek out a company that specializes in this type of insurance. Make sure the policy is not limited to your specific province or state but rather on a worldwide basis. With more and more insurance companies entering this market, it should be rather easy to obtain a policy that fits your exposure.