Case study · 02 - Commercial P&C agency
Relationship Resets, Caught Before the Remarket
$9M revenue independent agency · 1,100 commercial accounts · 8 producers, 12 account managers
A hospitality and real estate agency used Pulse to see when the people behind an account changed, met the new decision makers before a competing broker did, then had FDEs automate the stewardship work.
Company profile
- Revenue
- $9M
- Employees
- 48
- Commercial accounts
- 1,100, about 80% of revenue
- Team
- 8 producers · 12 account managers
- Niches
- Restaurant groups, hotels, habitational
- Retention
- 89.6% commercial, prior year
Applied Epic
Outlook
HubSpot
Microsoft TeamsPulse started read-only on Applied Epic and producer email, then added people and executive-change sources across the book.
The challenge
Most lost accounts were not lost on price. They were lost after the person who chose the agency left, and the replacement had never met anyone there. By the time a loss-run request or a broker of record letter arrived, the decision was usually made.
7 of 11
commercial accounts lost in the prior year had a CFO, owner, or primary contact change in the six months before the BOR letter.
4.5 mo
median time since the last logged producer meeting on the accounts that left, against two months on the accounts that stayed.
Single-threaded
relationships on most mid-size accounts: one contact, held by one producer, recorded in one inbox.
None
of the agency's systems flagged a contact change. Epic still listed the people who had left.
Accounts did not leave because service slipped. They left because nobody at the agency knew the person who now made the call.
The Book of Business Audit
- Accounts
- 380 commercial accounts renewing in the next two quarters
- Systems
- Applied Epic and producer email, read-only
- Window
- Baseline, then 30 days of observation
- Backfill
- Two years of activities and contacts
Pulse matched every contact in Epic to current people and executive data, backfilled two years of activity, and watched for 30 days. Producers rated each high-priority event: was it useful, and did we already know.
- 1
29 high-priority events across 380 accounts. Producers rated 19 useful, and 12 both useful and new to the team.
- 2
Replayed against the prior year, Pulse would have flagged 6 of the 7 lost accounts with a contact change at least 90 days before the BOR letter.
- 3
The strongest pattern: a new finance leader, a loss-run request within 30 days, and no producer meeting in five months.
- 4
Forty-one Epic contacts on renewing accounts had left their companies. Nobody had updated them.
What Pulse surfaced
Four of the events that came up in the audit review:
Relationship reset before renewal
Primary contact left, new CFO started, five years of loss runs requested two weeks later
$71,400 commission
New to the teamOwnership change at a hotel group
Property sold to a new owner, new asset manager hired, renewal in 64 days
$58,200 commission
New to the teamAccount gone quiet
No producer meeting in 211 days, two unanswered emails, renewal in 95 days
$33,900 commission
New to the teamLawsuit filed against an insured
Premises liability suit filed, account manager not notified, GL renewal in 120 days
$26,700 commission
Team already knew29
high-priority events in 30 days
66%
rated useful
41%
useful and non-obvious
What FDEs built on top
FDEs turned the agency's retention playbook into Revenue Events and agents. Nothing reaches a client without a producer's approval.
Relationship Reset Agent
When a decision maker changes, drafts an intro brief on the new person, a stewardship summary of the account, and a meeting request for the producer to send.
Stewardship Report Agent
Assembles the year in review from Epic: coverage, claims, service activity, and what changed in the business, ready for the producer to walk through.
Custom retention events
Rules for what puts a relationship at risk in this book, from new owners to loss-run requests, versioned and signed off by the agency principal.
Contact hygiene
Departed contacts are flagged on the Epic account with the replacement, and the account manager confirms the update.
The agency principal asks Pulse, “which renewing accounts have a decision maker we have not met?”, and gets the list with the evidence linked.
The rollout
Weeks 1-2
Book of Business Audit
Read-only connection for 380 renewing accounts. Contacts matched and two years of activity backfilled in four days.
Weeks 3-6
Observe and rate
Producers rated every high-priority event. 12 of 29 were useful and new; the principal reviewed each with the producer.
Month 2
Pulse live on the commercial book
All 1,100 accounts monitored. Relationship events routed to the producer, with the account manager copied.
Month 3
FDE agents live
Relationship reset and stewardship agents in production, with every outbound message approved by a producer.
Results
$640k
commission at risk surfaced
across accounts with a relationship event in the first 90 days
+2.4 pts
commercial retention
89.6% to 92.0%, sustained across two renewal quarters
83%
of new decision makers met
before the account went to market, up from roughly a third
41%
useful + non-obvious
of high-priority events, rated by the producers who had to act on them
Value delivered
$150k-$210k year-one agency revenue protected
$120k-$170k
Retained commission
Matched comparison of flagged-and-worked accounts against similar accounts from the prior year, counting only renewals with a documented relationship event, discounted to 70%.
~900 hrs/yr
Stewardship prep returned
Measured stewardship report time before and after, applied across renewing accounts, valued at loaded cost.
$30k-$40k
Rounding on reset accounts
New lines bound in meetings set by a relationship event, at the commission actually earned.
All estimates discounted for year-one realization. Commission varies by line, carrier, and agency arrangement; no universal rate is assumed.
Beyond the producer team
The same events now reach teams that were never in scope:
Agency leadership sees which producers' books carry the most single-threaded relationships.
Account managers keep Epic contacts current without a cleanup project.
Neither effect is included in the value figures above.