Agents in the financial services sector play a crucial role in sustaining the business. Financial services encompasses broad sub-verticals such as: banking, insurance and mutual fund companies where its crucial role such as building relationships and obtaining business volumes cannot be underestimated.

Personalized sales are the established approach by agents and brokers for decades. They carry a lot of information about products, markets and prices. But after IoT, big data, and analytics moved to center stage, it became imperative that agents and brokers stay relevant. Mobile clients supported by the mobile workforce of enterprises pose existential threats to agents and brokers. Many may wonder: is this the end of the road for brokers and agents?

Financial services bigwigs may consider eliminating the role of agents who lure in new prospects at low premiums or discounts. But wait a bit longer before sending the execution order, as they still have the firepower. It is in this area that focused study is required.

Can Agents Remain Relevant?

Now the question before us is, are agents and brokers relevant? First, they have a time-tested relationship with a large number of accounts that they assiduously nurtured. Today, brokers themselves are mobile and savvy with IT tools to nurture their audience. With the help of IT applications on their mobile devices, they are looking for faster customer acquisition. In this process, they:

• Contact your prospects and educate them about the products.
• Provide valuable advice on the most feasible product for them.
• Evaluate the performance of securities.
• Build rapport after understanding all aspects of customer relationships.

We are getting to the important point. Today the obsolescence of technology is making the role of agents irrelevant. To some extent, this is true if mobile customers make a full agent switch and have direct interaction with the business. But the question is how feasible that idea is. We all know that in our busy schedules, prioritizing whether paying a premium or buying stock may not appeal to everyone, with a few exceptions. The reason behind this is that people are not as motivated and agents walk into this gap with their relationship building skills.

In areas like spending money, people are a bit scary and slow in making decisions. This cannot be interpreted as weakness, but it is in fact wisdom, as the sensible do research and think a lot before taking the step. What does this mean for the financial services sector? Financial Services may be excited about IT tools that help clients make informed decisions. But what is the exact scenario? People will do all the research with the tools on mobile devices, but many are unlikely to make the final purchase decision because there is a need for a resource person to provide relevant and contextual information about products and services. This should be followed by the ability to close the deal once the curiosity level rises to the highest. Who can replace the agents or brokers who have been doing this for decades?

So now readers might have understood the value of agents in closing the deal. Winning business is no ordinary deal. It requires a lot of effort, constant monitoring of customers to reach a decision. Only SMS alerts will not work. With that said, let’s consider how agents can be used creatively with technology in this age of technological disruption. We also need to consider how and how agents can be empowered with technology.

Agents can be in survival mode with IT tools

To survive in today’s volatile markets, what is most needed is actionable information. Agents working overtime building relationships and closing deals definitely require the latest IT tools, to be specific BI, big data and analytics tools to make key decisions. In the case of insurance, BI tools can help agents and brokers gain key information about customers and understand their inclination to offer customized products or solutions. BI dashboards will help you manage relationships effectively. Such is the case of banking and investment companies that hire third parties for business development.

The analytics app comes in different areas like content analytics, context analytics, and business analytics. In content analytics, unstructured data such as call center logs, sensor data, audio, and video data can be analyzed to track trends, customer responses, etc. In context analysis, data is analyzed to understand context, which is vital for making context-based decisions. In Business Analytics, patterns, behaviors or trends are discovered through statistical analysis. Last but not least, there is predictive analysis, in which techniques such as statistical analysis, regression analysis, correlation analysis, cluster analysis, social network analysis, etc., are applied for the development of new products.

Agents are catalysts in gathering information as they move with people and spark discussions about products and services. Due to this more powerful reason, it cannot be concluded that agents are emerging from the age of disruptive technology. But at the same time, agents must turn to IT for their survival, as well as the survival of financial services companies. Let time tell the rest.