How EDE Improves your Relationship with Insurance Agents

The impact and importance of the insurance agent/broker community on the ACA individual market has grown with each passing Open Enrollment. Agents facilitated 55% of total ACA enrollments during the 2021 Open Enrollment Period. They are often the front line in guiding individuals through the enrollment process, and they maintain strong relationships with customers throughout the year. 

Agents also know that their carrier relationships are necessary for their success—as do the carriers whose products they sell. Enhanced Direct Enrollment helps brokers and agents increase their revenue by making agents more efficient per consumer and providing prospect engagement tools that help increase their conversion rates. EDE provides an enrollment and administration platform that makes their customers happy while strengthening their partnerships with preferred carriers.

EDE makes agents able to service their customers faster and more easily, and it allows them to track their customers through the enrollment process. Giving your agents this ability will make them better able to sell your health insurance products.

How EDE with HealthSherpa Connects Agents/Brokers to Carriers

Whether you’re a carrier or agent, your ultimate goal is to connect as many people to the best health insurance for them as you can. Doing so requires the least amount of friction possible—both for customers and for the agents that support them. As a customer, that means getting through eligibility and enrollment as quickly and efficiently as you can. For agents, it means being able to rely upon the enrollment experience to guide customers as thoroughly as possible so that you can focus your efforts on connecting with and helping the customers who need it most. These goals ultimately benefit carriers because it’s their products that agents are selling and that customers are buying.

So who benefits from this symbiotic relationship? Well, EDE with HealthSherpa is a rising tide that lifts all ships. Its full API integration with HealthCare.gov makes it easier for:

• Customers to get through the enrollment process
• Agents to track their customer base, get new prospects, enroll members in bulk, and track their sales for easy coordination with carriers on payment.
• Carriers to strengthen their relationships with agents and consumers through data sharing and coordinated outreach.

These benefits are particularly important for carriers who rely upon agents as their primary sales channel. Providing easy access to data and analytics, as well as HealthSherpa’s exclusive lead-scoring system, gives you an added advantage in appealing to agents to sell your products. In short, when you use EDE with HealthSherpa, it’s as easy for your licensed agents to see how they’re doing as it is for you to do the same.

Here are more great features that will help you better appeal to the agent community by providing them with access to your EDE marketplace:

Enrollment and Administration Advantages

• Agents can quote and enroll on your site.
• Collaborative tools to help clients self-enroll or enroll over the phone.
• Full access to HealthSherpa data and service experts.
• Automated completion of HealthCare.gov tasks, including eligibility, ID-proofing, and setting up individual accounts on HealthCare.gov. 
• Real-time data for continuous marketing, sales and process improvement—for example, agents can see where their clients are stuck in the process.

Prospect Engagement

• Lead scoring gets agents to high-quality leads, faster.
• A coordinated tie between customers, agents and carriers.
• Ties agents to prospects for enrollments and renewals to help you do payments properly

Increase Revenue and Efficiency

• Same enrollment backend (APIs) as HealthCare.gov with full access to customer journey tracking
• Ability to message prospects at key points in the enrollment process.
• No added work for you in tracking and organizing your leads for communication, conversion and renewal.

You and your sales partners are all working toward a common goal. Doesn’t it make sense to also be working on a common platform?

To learn more about EDE, contact us at ede@healthsherpa.com.