Case Study: Client Portal
Learn how an insurance broker created a client portal as a strategy to unseat a much larger incumbent and in the process create a new multimillion dollar vertical.
Client Snapshot:
Employee benefits and property and causality carrier and broker.
The Lewer Agency, Inc., a fifty-year old insurance brokerage in Kansas City designs medical benefit plans for international students. The plans provide comprehensive medical insurance benefits for inbound and study abroad programs. Unlike most insurance agencies, Lewer processes all claims internally to ensure prompt and consistent service, administrative accuracy and timely communications.
Washington University in St. Louis has a nationally acclaimed student health insurance plan that covers 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students and their dependents. All students are required to enroll in the plan and the university becomes the primary care provider in a comprehensive student centered health and counseling service role.
Challenge:
The Lewer Agency had the opportunity to design and implement a medical insurance plan for the university, but needed to differentiate themselves to stand out.
The Lewer Agency had the opportunity to design and implement a medical insurance plan to serve this prestigious institution and their student body. However, they had to win the business from an entrenched incumbent provider. Lewer Agency had to find a high gain and compelling differentiator to win the deal.
Solution:
A web enabled, secure student health care portal to link seamlessly to the university’s student health web site.
The Lewer Agency needed to develop a strategy to secure Washington University’s business and to administer and adjudicate the expected claims volume. Lewer met with the Fluent Consultants team to discuss how to provide services that would differentiate and elevate their service offering. Fluent recommended a web enabled, secure student health care portal to link seamlessly to the university’s student health web site.
The portal was designed to give students access to all current medical insurance, including:
Registering for coverage
Using and understanding the plan
Enrolling dependents
Printing ID cards
Purchasing additional coverage options
Submitting and tracking claims
The portal also enabled the student health services department to track and monitor student activity.
Final Outcome:
Lewer used the web portal idea as a key element of its presentation and won the business from the competition.
The portal greatly streamlined and simplified the communication, implementation and monitoring of the university’s medical insurance plan. Ongoing enhancements to the portal, such as an “online” waiver system for the schools, have resulted in improved performance in two subsequent renewal periods
In addition, Lewer has leveraged information from this project to improve service and performance for other clients.