Jackson Fregeau: Building Smarter Agencies Through Automation

0:00 all right all right all right welcome to another episode of Agents influence podcast conversations with me Jason Cass and today I have a uh a good partner somebody who's not a partner with me but he supports a lot of the things that I do because he shows his support to the independent insurance agent and he knows that we here at agency intelligence love it so it's Jackson uh frero am I right when I say that F FR I'm sorry it's from

0:32 Canada I'm put this J on it FR you know uh so any okay there's been a I've had I've had a lot worse pronunciations over the years okay yes yes Jackson so I apologize and I'm gonna tell you this next time if we do this again the loyal listeners know this if we do this again I'm probably gonna butcher it then too but you know I'm going to have to announce your awesomeness at Indie Tech which we'll talk a little bit at the end

0:58 um so I better learn how to say it so anyways Jackson tell them in two three minutes where you were born and how you got to where you are now so that they could kind of relate to who you are yeah sounds sounds good so the Cole's notes of it I grew up in a in a small town in Northwestern Ontario called uh called canor a little town of like 15,000 people um it's kind of set

1:23 at the edge of the Canadian Shield but a lot of big beautiful lakes around so grew up there nice uh moved away for moved away for University univers and uh always sort of had a had a desire for entrepreneurship and sort of you know hanging your own shingle like doing something on your own sort of self-reliance Independence uh that always really appealed to me so it was always interested in doing something on my own and I did a did a business and

1:48 finance degree and then my brother did a a software engineering degree gotcha and as Jameson and my brother was finishing up school we were really interested in doing something on our own together and it kind of dipped our toes and couple things but nothing really grabbed us and then I was actually working for a startup right after school and I had built an automation program in that company and was really Blown Away by the value that it could provide and looked

2:11 around at you know smbs midmarket companies across Canada in the US nobody was really at this time benefiting from you know what a lot of people refer to now as RPA robotic process automation but like nobody could really use bots in like small mediumsized businesses it just the business model didn't really exist so we wanted to build a robot a service business model for smbs right where they get a robot that solves a problem they don't need to spend you

2:36 know months and months figuring out deploying it building it all that all that stuff so we started quandre originally to sort of solve that problem worked with our first couple uh couple agencies about two and a half years ago and it was at that point that we just realized how sort of big of a pain point there was in the insurance industry around this kind of work and that what our technology could could deliver a ton

2:59 of value for for agencies so pivoted the company to focus on insurance and that's what we've been doing the last you know two two and a half years now been building uh really what what we are at quandre is really a vertical vertical automation company for for agencies so building intelligent robots that automate a variety of timec consuming and manual processes across across the agency I remember it was about 2017 2018 I hired this guy his name was Joe he

3:26 didn't work too well in our agency because he's a real Tech Guy and we didn't need it at the time but I remember he had this program and I couldn't remember what it was something he downloaded offline and it gave you 10 like triggers or whatever for free meaning if you told it to go from here and then hit the the type in something here uh that would have been one and then to go to this page fill out the

3:51 login information would have been two hitting the next button would have been three right and you got like eight to 10 for free so if you could build the automation within that but anything over that that's where they charged you and I remember thinking to myself this is going to be huge one day because what he had done is he had shown us that if we would have bought it within like 15 Steps he could have taught the thing to

4:12 go get our commission statements and I remember thinking to himself at my time I'm like man there's going to be a future for that you know and and at the time it wasn't and so then when I heard quandry which was the very first one through Jeff Roy that I heard about and he started telling me what I was doing I remember I went right back to that freaking conversation I had with myself like holy here it is now I wanna I

4:35 wna we're going to talk a little bit more about it but one thing I want to throw out there and you may know this I was talking with a guy uh Chase uh Courtney uh with ipfs and he came from the fintech industry and he laughed about the fact that like five 10 years ago RPA and and and and uh uh a uh apis and stuff that was the talk then and he thought it was funny how he's now come

5:03 over to the insurance side and we're just now starting to talk about this stuff can you relate to that does that make sense in knowing your industry definitely yeah definitely like RPA really grew up in financial services right that's where like the first RPA companies really really made their Mark and you know RPA itself is actually not a it's not that new of a technology like companies like Brew blue prism they've been around for you know 20 20 plus

5:29 years yeah but used to be very limited right the technology has really really improved and what you can do now is like not just take RPA but you add more intelligence into that you add in machine learning you add in AI now you can build like these really intelligent robots that can automate some pretty nuanced processes so so Jackson Let's Get Let's Get Silly here let's go fourth grade level right so like at the end of

5:51 the day you and your company um you you build these Bots what does that look like like if you're where does it start I'm a customer and I say to you yes I want to start doing business what does it look like from the customer side but also the behind the curtain what's going on on your side to help make this happen sure yeah so I'll be I'll be really specific so that it makes makes a lot of

6:12 sense say you know you come yeah you come you come to and we've got you know multiple pre-trained existing robots which basically means these are trained on uh dozens or you know in some cases you know hundred other agencies uh processes so they can be deployed very quickly easily so you come to us you say you know I want that robot in my in my business let's say you want to buy our you know renewal reviewer robot so what

6:38 that robot actually does is it's going to go into your existing system so into your you know agency management system it's going to identify upcoming renewals it's going to extract all the policy details from last year's renewal this year's renewal you know coverage information rating information claims data Etc all the all the information um relevant to that account it's going to then take all the information understand it um ingest it and then provide a summary back showing you know summary of

7:06 the renewal upsell opportunities cross sell opportunities missing discounts risk turn Eno risk all that type of stuff and then set activities necessary for your team to actually actually manage that so that's one very specific example of what we do so let's say you know you came to us you wanted to buy uh you wanted to buy that product you get onboarded you know your onboarding starts uh within a week of you of you signing the contract you get get access

7:29 to our web application uh it's called our control room within the control room you can set all of the parameters for your robot oh wow when you want it to run how you want it to run what coverages you want it to check what discounts you want it to check all of that is entirely configurable on your side through our web application you can test it in there you can deploy it in there you can go through that processing

7:51 on your on your own typically takes an agency uh 30 to 60 days averages about 45 days to get get it up and running you'll obviously be working with our team sort of throughout that process but can all be guided yourself and then um day one boom you're like man Bots deployed it goes out there when does it do this stuff when is it doing these these tasks whenever whenever you want so you can have it run middle of the

8:16 night you can have it run in the morning you could have it run multiple times throughout the day entirely uh entirely up to you okay and is there any limitation to what you can teach the bot to do yes and no so um the answer is really sort of no with time right like given time and development resources like you can you can teach it to do anything um but there are limitations of

8:47 you know what it's doing of what it's trained on today right like there are we're always adding in sort of new coverages that it can look for and new discounts that it can understand adding in like a lot more Nuance across regions and carriers really what we want to be able to provide like with with that bot for example is like the best agent reviewing your renewals so that your agents can then just rely on that data

9:10 and have a really strong level of confidence in that data and just call out to the customers and actually do the stuff that you know you're you're paying them to do um so with time it can learn it can learn anything it's just a matter of sort of continuing to evolve the product wow wow now let's we were high level let's get a little geeky if other compan have been out there for 25 years and you say no but yet with time yes

9:34 what is that I mean how if it's a robot and it's out there and you can train it to do certain things getting geeky for a minute why can't why can't you train it to do anything well you you can train it to do anything it just takes it takes time and development resources right so as an example like what we're you know what we're what we're planning on doing right now I described sort of how that how

9:56 that robot works but where we'd like to take it to the next step is not only you know ingesting all of this renewal data but then if you wanted it to you know based on certain triggers to go out and you know quote that in different markets well then it could go out and quote that and pull it back and then basically you know it's going back it's pulling out a quote and then it's actually you know

10:17 recommending to an agent like here are the top three or here are the top four that you can act on and then in some cases you know if that doesn't actually need to be handled by a person it could send out a text or send out an email based on a recom recommendation directly to the end the end client so you know all of that is possible right it's all it's all possible you need to build sort

10:36 of more intelligence into the robot machine learning needs to needs to improve um and you just need more time to to build in that Nuance but all of that is doable it's just a matter of you know prioritizing it and iteratively getting yeah you and guia together I think would be fan freaking tastic right because Gia there still have a lot of manual the AI can help me put the information where it goes but there's still of manual clicking that has to

11:01 happen and I'd love the robot to work in unison of where the AI can't because there needs to be a manual person adding it's a drop down of some type then the RPA could come in there and do that specific thing jump back out um I think that'd be there let me also explain something real quick Jackson to to the to the loyal listeners okay um this is some part of my new content that I'm doing as I go across America giving

11:23 these Keynotes and just trying to help agents understand this there is only four ways in inside an agency to do tasks to get things done to however it can be whether it's selling a policy to making a change to doing commission statements there's only four ways it's either a licensed person it's an unlicensed person it's artificial intelligence or it's RPA robotic process and automation there's only four ways and I've challenged all the people I've spoke to if you can find another way

11:54 that you can get a task done outside of those I I encourage you now when we start to look for that it's just not understanding that it's understanding the economy of scale it's understanding that if we do it in that order you almost can see that how you should be paying it that most expensive thing Tas should be going to your licensed people the least expensive should be AI or RPA because those are things that they

12:19 shouldn't be doing and how many times Jackson are we hearing about this new technology that comes out and everybody always ends by saying what you just said which is the truth this is going to allow your team to be able to have the conversations with your employees that you've always asked them to do all the kpis that you measure on your employees with cross selling and referrals and what and uh Google review asks or whatever it could possibly be these are

12:48 things that should be automated oh you want to sit around and you want to about Ivans because Ivans isn't able to download everything well you can sit around a about it or you can do like we do at the insurance Alliance and you go get some robotic processing automation that would go there and get it for you now is it a crime that we have to do that yes it is a crime that that just doesn't automatically already

13:08 work but a lot of stuff is that way and Jackson has come in to be able to fill that and and I think that it's being filled in a ways that it's not going to go away right there's only those four ways and Jackson That's the mission I'm on we have to start looking at every task we do in an agency and say what P one of those four what one of those four should be doing that

13:29 and if you don't number one your costs are going to be higher than they should be and number two my people are going to be on the phone talking to people at a higher level and I'm beating you and you could start to see Jackson this great separator that starts to come between the agents who listened and started doing this and the other agents that didn't there Comes A Time very very soon where they can't catch me when I'm

13:51 doing this stuff and they're not sorry Jackson I I that's to the loyal listeners they've got to hear that and understand that what do you think about that Jackson yeah I I think it makes makes a lot of sense Jason like the way that we always think about I think it's interesting how we think about our business like how we think about our product is allowing customers our customers meaning agents to have more conversations and better

14:13 conversations right when you think of a when you think of an you know agency one to agency two to agency three really what you know what separates them from each other for their end clients is the service that they provide right it's the service that you provide to your clients like one 100% there's you know there's also your relationships with carriers and like there's other stuff you do operational efficiency all that stuff is important but ultimately for your

14:36 customers like that's what's that's what's important so how do you deliver a better service you have you sort of need um better data better understanding of the files right easier to access that data but spend more time on the phone talk to your clients more give them better give them better summaries give them better updates if they have problems being able to to give them a call and and do that so do that proactively so I think you're bang on in

15:03 that like the uh the agencies that can afford to have people talking to their clients more are the ones that will win and the way that you afford to do that is by running leaner which technology allows you to do and using technology to get your staff away from the you know timec consuming repetitive things so that they can focus excuse me where they can really add the value to the end client man what a conversation and

15:27 that's where that's where you're going to win we're I mean I this is not lip service people this is this is real real life stuff um I was going to say something about what you said about the running leaner because it it is the truth and I I don't I don't think people quite get it it has to do with uh um I Heard Jeff Roy say this a long time ago and a lot of people I've even heard two

15:48 or three um speakers who have said that they said this absolute lie in 2017 Jeff Roy said this and he said AI will not replace agents but those agents use AI will replace those who don't right that is an absolute fact and one of the things I even talk about giving a little bit another hint of mine is I break down um Jackson a a a case study and I break down the case study and in the case

16:15 study I'm base it on two things I base it on productivity and efficiency and I break down a case study for each and I believe that that it's doing the same with more is what productivity is when I can do when I can do the I'm sorry do more with the same if I can do more with the same that is how I'm winning right but if I can do the if I can use the same to do less that's efficiency in my

16:42 opinion with a broad brush stroke I think that RPA fits over more into the efficiency and so it does to do with productivity too everybody I'm just for my for my case study I was trying to break down for agents and I said if you were a million-dollar agency and I broke It Down based on what's the average of what's the payroll vers annualized so if you're an agency um and you're a million dollars in Revenue you're probably

17:07 paying about $550,000 in your cost of of of to a person that's that's a every cost in there okay the average agency I was just in Canada they said the average agency is 50 to 60% as well like it is in America we're already seeing these agencies that are using RPA that are using AI that using unlicensed uh Vees why those three because that's about 80% of what we do in an agency we're already seeing them go down into the 40 and

17:38 45% we're talking 400,000 versus 550,000 on a million dollar agency that's real life numbers now I broke down the efficiency part and the efficiency part comes down to a million dollar agency just having RPA go to 10 carriers and spending on an average of seven to 10 minutes is what our our staff would do bringing that back in naming it adding it to the to the to the AMS adding it over here double quick qu bring it in

18:07 and add it to all the places they have to if it takes anywhere between seven to 15 minutes and we've looked at the numbers and we know that's it and they have to go to 10 carriers you can start to figure out the math is about 70 to 150 minutes is what they could be spending on this a day and then you take that times a week you start taking that times a year on a million dooll Agency

18:28 for one person it saves $7,550 so if you're paying somebody $50,000 roughly just to do the that you should have a v um RPA doing is what's this is what's is costing you right and and then and for you to hook up with quandry it's not going to cost you $166,000 I mean depends on how big of an agency are but if you're a million-dollar agency you it should be should be there but and and guys by the

18:54 way I need to throw a disclaimer here Jackson I don't make any money from them they're they he comes to my events but he's not a sponsor of AI we don't have an exchange if you call him do whatever that that that's not going to happen I just want you guys to know that he provides RPA and RPA provides you time and money that saves you money so wanted you to know that so yeah I think I'll

19:16 just add one one point I think is really interesting like we've seen um I think this just really sort of highlights like how impactful this stuff can be like we've seen we've seen cases where you know our Tech technology has done like five to 6% 5 to 7% maybe on the high end of um of that agency's workload right so when you think of sort of total total staff like the number of Staff it's sort of repurposed 5% of the total staff to

19:46 different work and the this was a big agency this was like I'm thinking of a case where it had you know like 200 uh 200 people um and we repurposed the work of about five to six% of those so people could then go do you know more impactful work so it's like pretty pretty large numbers oh that's a huge freaking number that's a huge number dude hell yeah hell yeah and here's the other thing agency owners listen to me listen to me you're

20:11 mad when your people are on the phone and they won't cross sell you're mad about it you wish your people would do it but let me ask you a question go ask your CSR you know you've had this conversation in your meetings you know you've had this conversation and you talk to your CSR and you say hey we need to do this or or whatever and probably if they're all together with their friends they probably feel more powerful

20:32 to say this they'll go I'm going to tell you what when someone calls in for a change the last thing I want to do is ask them for more business I'm too swamped they're not too swamped quoting they're too swamped doing all the other Boney that RPA should be doing and then they wouldn't be as swamped and then they'd have that conversation but they're so swamped doing the stuff that RPA should be doing that they're not

20:57 going to have that conversation this is not rocket science here folks this is not rocket science this is how when you call into anything online US Bank or am you can't call Amazon but you call anywhere they're asking you just the details right because they know the automation's going to take care of all the rest they're having a highlevel conversation with you so that they can get deep into what they need to be helping you with so they can sell their

21:21 damn product right but we don't so anyways man sorry I love this stuff that's why I was so fired up when you were coming on today because I've just I've seen the power of this stuff and I was just in Canada and I know you're from Canada they're just as lost as Americans are on this and probably a lot more backwards Jeff Roy's on the tech panel talking people are looking at him like he's just like freaking crazy and

21:45 then when I tell them that I do kind of the same stuff they're like what the hell I mean you could just kind of see it and it's uh anyways Jackson Jackson it's been a good conversation in this baby put a stamp of approval on it as one of the best for 2024 what do you have to say as we close you know what I what I have to say I think so we've been you know we've

22:06 been doing this for about about three three years or so and over that threeyear period we have actually seen a pretty significant change in the distribution channel so in the in the agency channel brokerages in in Canada I think right now is a really exciting time to be an agent damn right I think for a long time there wasn't you know the there was missing innovation there wasn't innovation in the channel That there that there should have been um and

22:32 I think now like we're seeing a lot more you know we do some of that but there's other really exciting companies that are coming to the coming to the Forefront as well and I think over the next five years I think the amount of sort of technology and Innovation available to agencies is going to be amazing I agree um where I think right now we're sort of on the pre precipice of it right like it's it's happening and it's coming but

22:53 a lot of these companies are like early stage the next five years I think ch but it'll get clean and there's a lot of different lot of different ones kind of biting off small pieces here and there but over the next few years that's going to change a lot and I think it'll give a lot more freedom and a lot more agency to Independent agents so I think it's an exciting time for all your for all your

23:12 listeners because I think there's a lot of good stuff coming I agree and I think it's a really good time also um Jackson for people like yourself now I do thank you for coming to this and thank you very much for your wise words yeah thank you thank you for having me so I think there's a lot of success loyal listeners that comes to firms like um Jackson and I and I hope Jackson I don't know his

23:31 his business this well I just know that he's a very reputable and I know many agents that use him in his firm um just for FYI we do not use Jackson as firm but we do have RPA now one thing I want to say that I think is important is I think those going forward um will become Indie te right I think Jackson you could build Bots for a lot of different people but for you to be successful in the

23:53 insurance industry you have to bury yourself in an A in an agency and and I want to encourage agency owners to start talking to their vendors about that no longer of the day can they come through and saywell we've helped these people do this or do that when we look at the fact of who these companies are a lot of these that call themselves insure techs are actually those who are helping us with products in the same um doing the

24:18 same tasks or things that any sales offer uh organization needs like CRM work right lead generation work all these different prospecting tools that no matter who you are and they try to make us think by putting their name insure Tech on it that they're part of us they're really truly not they're not indie Tech and that's why I talk about Indie Tech so much and when you look at quandry they're Indie Tech they bury themselves into the agency what can we

24:46 learn someone comes along and wants them to make a new bot and they're like holy didn't even think of that right how can we help our other independent agents with that right that's what they think they don't think how can we sell this to Amazon don't get me wrong Jackson you don't turn down Amazon if they come you sell this son of a and you run all right I will not be mad at you but anyways the point is is I think it's

25:09 those so I want you to look for because after the sale especially when it starts coming into this servicing do they understand that Independent Insurance Agents do it differently than every other industry and we do it differently than each other that's how difficult this segment is for us to find now it is messy there's a lot of them for you to go with and some of them can do this and some of them can do that but that'll as

25:33 as Jackson said that'll clean itself up that'll clean itself up that's what the industry always does but make sure that you are supporting those who are supporting Independent Insurance Agents that's vital that's vital and Jackson did you have something you want to say yeah I think it's a I think it's a really good point Jason like we have learned we have learned so much over the last few years and there is no way that we would be able to provide the level of

25:59 service and quality that we do if we served multiple different types of customers that's right right like there's there's just no way like insurance agencies operate in a very Nuance specific way the technology is different right you use different systems than than lots of other Industries that's right the data is different right it's all the different policy data like and I and I and I actually think that what we're going to see I think with Automation and I also

26:24 think with AI I think the businesses that are really going to dominate in like Enterprise Automation and Enterprise AI are going to be the ones that go vertical it's going to be vertical software 100 100% we're all seeing that but just the level of depth that you can get to with your customers and the level of value that you can provide because you're only focused on a single set of customers I think it just it'll it'll win in the long run they

26:48 came in in the 2015 2016 2017 and they inure Tech were the ones that kept saying we're going to disrupt you we're here in 2024 in the indie Tech is on the rise I really applaud those that like yourself I've said this to I also said this to client Circle Tory MZ I love that guy I told him I said you're in the cat bird seat you are too you're you're you're in the position that everybody

27:11 else is going to come to it's one of the reasons why I decided to create virtual intelligence understanding the service and helping agents understand that RPA that Ai and then helping bees do it I knew it's it's it's something that's on the it's on the upside it's not on the down so um I wanted I just wanted to encourage you guys on that loyal listeners loyal listeners I'm going to get out of here because you know what I

27:32 do I do it for you tell me your thoughts and tell me your ideas and I'm going to tell the world what you had to say this is Jason Cass and this is Jackson fro I hope I said it right and if I got it no he said I said it right loyal listeners aren't you just proud aren't you proud thank you