Preparing for AEP: Strategies for Success with ConnectureDRX

In this episode of the Insurtech Building Blocs Podcast, hosts Tim Robinson and Cory Schmidt discuss the upcoming AEP and the challenges faced by independent agents in the insurance industry. They are joined by Jason Schmittgens and Andrew Tutaj from ConnectureDRX, who introduce their new product, PlanCompare Edge for Agents, designed to streamline the quoting and enrollment process for independent brokers. The conversation covers the need for a unified platform, the response from IMOs and FMOs, and the impact of CMS regulations on the market. The episode concludes with insights on how agents can benefit from the new solution and how to get started.

Insurtech Building Blocs is presented by AgencyBloc, the #1 Recommended Insurance Industry Growth Platform serving the benefits and senior market space with 6,500+ customers across multiple solutions within the platform. With a range of insurance-specific solutions for sales enablement, client and policy management, compliance management, quoting and proposals, and commissions management — all with highly recommended customer support — we've got you covered.

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Transcript

Tim Robinson (00:01.454)
Hey everybody, welcome to another InsurTech podcast with Cory Schmidt and Tim Robinson. Great to connect, it's been a little while. Cory I think you've been busy.

Cory Schmidt (00:19.178)
We've been pretty busy with getting ready for AEP. It's the final weeks leading up.

Tim Robinson (00:27.564)
Yeah, it's amazing. It every year, right? It happens every year and it's crazy how it seems like it comes up faster and faster each cycle. And mind you, this is my only my second one, right? Since I've been in the business. So I'm not going to go into how many it's been for you. So I don't, you know, I don't want to do anything about forecasting your age or sharing your age, but you've been through a few of these, right?

Cory Schmidt (00:53.93)
been through a few, yes indeed. So, and it's never a dull moment either. So, and I think we have some, some guests with us today who can probably actually sympathize. Maybe even more so than us.

Tim Robinson (01:06.758)
yeah, I think, you know, here we are trying to say, man, this is happening. This is awful. the two people we have here are right in the throes of it. And, I'm going to guess preparing for pretty crazy season. So, Andrew and Jason, great to have you guys here.

Jason Schmittgens (01:28.784)
Great to be here. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Cory.

Andrew Tutaj (01:31.059)
Absolutely. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Cory. We appreciate you guys having us on.

Tim Robinson (01:35.51)
so would you guys mind just taking a quick moment, introduce yourselves to, well, listeners.

Jason Schmittgens (01:45.486)
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Jason Schmittgens I'm a Director of Strategic Accounts with ConnectureDRX. So I've worked with the company and in the industry for coming up on seven years now based in Chicago, Illinois. And I work with many of our health plan partners, our FMO and agency partners. And now like we'll be talking about today, the independent agents out there as well. So kind of see it all from a bunch of different angles.

Andrew Tutaj (02:13.379)
Yep, and I'm Andrew Tutaj VP of Strategy, been with Connecture for a little over 11 years, served in a variety of different capacities. And oddly enough, one of my first few years here, we decided to implement AgencyBloc for a legacy book of business that we were trying to manage that Excel spreadsheets.

Tim Robinson (02:35.118)
I love it, I love it. Andrew, you're in Illinois as well. Am I remembering that right? Or in Wisconsin?

Andrew Tutaj (02:41.185)
A little bit north. So yeah, we're based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Tim Robinson (02:44.248)
Milwaukee, all right. We've got the Midwest covered here, I guess. We've got Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa. I guess we'll throw Iowa in there, in Michigan. excited for the podcast today. Really appreciate you guys carving out the time to spend with Cory and myself. Talk about some pretty exciting announcement.

You know, both, both organizations, both product sets, widely recognized in the industry, play a critical role in, in helping, our customers be successful, drive growth in their business, be more profitable and, and really at the heart of it, be able to have better conversations, with, with their end customers and really beneficiaries, I guess we should call them.

but really helping to find the right products for, for beneficiaries. again, great, great to have you guys here. And, also announcing, you know, from what I understand, Connecture recently launched a new product, PC Edge for agents. I was hoping you guys could explain what problem, what opportunity is, is, this product designed to solve and who's your ideal customer? What's, what's the ideal profile?

Jason Schmittgens (04:06.018)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we did just launch right at the beginning of this month, the PlanCompare Edge for Agents platform. So it's truly designed for the independent brokers out there.

You know, there's like I mentioned before I work with a lot of our FMOs and health plans agents often times have access to many different platforms to write the various Medicare products that they're certified and licensed to sell and I guess I take it a step back going back about four years ago we rolled out our first out-of-the-box solution called PlanCompare Edge which was designed for

for agencies and we did a lot of that in partnership with AgencyBloc with our integration that we have, right? So that was for agencies that may have had multiple upline FMOs and had access to various platforms, but not all of their carriers that they're certified and licensed to sell in one place. So that's kind of the genesis for the PlanCompare Edge for Agent platform, right? There's a lot of agents out there that have access to all these different platforms or may even have direct contracts with carriers themselves and have never historically had one place to manage their book of

business, run all their quotes, do all their enrollments all on one platform. So that's kind of the ideal user is that independent agent that wants to be able to have everything in one place and also leverage their own integrations if they're an AgencyBloc customer like many are today as well.

Cory Schmidt (05:25.108)
That's awesome. think one of the things Andrew had shared during one of our many visits over the last few years is like how many platforms that the highest producing agents were logging into. I don't know if you remember the stat offhand, Andrew, I'm putting you on the spot, but it like kind of blew my mind how many different solutions they were logging into, just Connecture solutions. That doesn't even include other platforms that they were using. I don't know if you remember the stat that you, that you guys found when you pulled that data.

Andrew Tutaj (05:53.443)
Yeah, absolutely. I've shared this many times internally to help kind of create the motivation for us to to push forward with PC Edge for agents. But it's two platforms on average for an agent. And that's across, you know, we're talking across, you know, probably over 20,000 agents that are using two platforms. And that gets into Cory's point, that's just visibility to.

the platforms or the customers that we have direct relationships with. So if they have other, if they're working with another platform that maybe is using our competitor solution, we wouldn't have visibility to that. And then what was even more kind of stark was that it goes for the highest producers. There were certain scenarios where it was upwards of 10 platforms. They were putting their profiles into completing an enrollment.

So it's definitely something that, you know, as Jason indicated earlier, it's it's something that we recognize as a challenge and we're just trying to figure out ways of how we can make that easier for the agent at end of

Cory Schmidt (07:01.13)
Yeah, it makes complete sense. that, know Andrew, we've talked about this over the years and obviously AgencyBloc has a lot of retail agencies as customers and you know, we really try to lean in and provide the solutions that will make their lives better. What changed in terms of how you guys viewed the market and the solutions that you wanted to bring to market that really made you push this to the top of your priority list for 2024? I think it was a

I think it was maybe here earlier this spring you had reached out and said, Hey, we're going to, we're going to provide a solution for the retail agents that they can subscribe to directly. Like, there anything in particular that made that kind of rise to the level of priority that, that you guys saw the need to put your team on this and deliver on it in 2024?

Andrew Tutaj (07:49.741)
Yeah, really great question. Yeah, so we've been evaluating this for some time. We've been looking at the data. We've been looking even at the anecdotal stories we hear from even agents of AgencyBloc. I if I've been to an AgencyBloc user group meetup or wherever it is, it's how many times have we heard the...

Hey, I'm using upline so -and -so, how do I connect my tenant solution of AgencyBloc to that? So kind of the combination of that, you know, just the kind of the carrier distribution connectivity to CRM is we really, we've been evaluating and have identified this as an industry challenge for some time. And what really created the motivation this year was, you know, we saw the need for us to push faster than

We might've held out a year if we've we not just with some of the CMS regulations and rules that were likely to come down. And even I know that there's a little bit of a stay here with some of the announcements that were made in April. We just think this is the right solution overall. we, you it was a motivator for us to accelerate into 2024, but it wasn't a, this is the only reason we're making the decision.

Cory Schmidt (09:10.058)
That makes sense. Curious how the IMO, FMO market has responded to this. know, Andrew, I know obviously you guys are supportive of all levels of the hierarchy. I think this actually, in my mind, you know, solidifies that, that you're trying to solve for challenges at every level of the hierarchy, but any particular IMO, FMO feedback that, you know, that you guys have taken as a result of launching this?

Andrew Tutaj (09:36.269)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, being quite candid, mean, there's there's been a range of reactions, I would say, on in the whole, probably, I'd say neutral to slightly favorable. But I think the reason why we've had that type of reaction is that we've had we've had, you know, long standing relationships, a lot of these FMOs where, you know, we're our take in the industry and our take as a technology provider is

we don't want to get involved with anything beyond just being a technology provider. We're not trying to offer any of the services, get involved with any sort of commission payment or receive some sort of variable type fee from the carriers for this platform. So think that helps alleviate a lot of the concerns. And then I think the other thing too, it's like we've had other solutions out there in the past, like PC Edge for agencies that we deployed as Jason indicated four years ago.

They've had down lines that have licensed our solution in various ways in the past. So I think this is just another iteration of that. And this just helps us kind of close off and now we have a solution for an agent, we have a solution for a small agency and we have a solution for a large agency.

Jason Schmittgens (10:47.182)
Yeah, and if I could just add to that, you know, the biggest thing with the PlanCompare Edge for Agent platform is it's upline agnostic. So these agents that are signing up are able to maintain their trusted relationships with their FMOs for all the other great services that they offer them too. It's just that, you know, the enrollment platform, they'll have the ability to sign up directly with us now and maintain those contracts where they are.

Tim Robinson (11:12.566)
Yeah, that's, I think that's a key piece here is, giving the ultimate flexibility, right? To, the agents and, to, some of the earlier points listening to, to the feedback from, from these agents and how they can be again, more effective, how they think about growing their business, but, you know, not discounting by any means the reliance on the IMO.

Jason Schmittgens (11:18.544)
Mm

Tim Robinson (11:40.834)
relationships, it's just a, another way for them to get a little more flexibility so that they can grow their business, which is good for everybody, right? If they're able to scale their business and, have more conversations, right? More policies. That's, that's great for the whole hierarchy. and you know, Andrew, you had mentioned something, earlier in Cory and I have covered off on.

this topic a few times on this podcast and had a few guests on, but it's been an interesting year when you think about CMS and some of the disruption that we've seen, or we should say uncertainty really. There was maybe two, three months ago, huge...

Tim Robinson (12:32.846)
amount of conversation or a lot of conversations around the impact of the compensation models. I don't know. I don't remember those. many page document? 1300 anyway, lot of pages to sift through and, too many, too many. And, you know, the reality is, it looks like they've walked back, a bit from those, compensation changes.

Cory Schmidt (12:48.65)
Too many.

Tim Robinson (13:02.118)
after there were some suits brought in, in the legal system and the court system. And, we'll see what that looks like going forward in future, enrollment periods, but for now that's, that's largely been, taken off the table. And, you know, we've certainly have seen the, temperature and the type of conversations that we're having change as especially as every, as we're getting closer to the enrollment season and everybody's focused right from all aspects of the.

of the industry and being able to have a great season enrollment season and being as effective as policy or as possible. have there been any other notable impacts or behavior changes? that's still occurred despite the limited regulatory impact from your guys perspective.

Andrew Tutaj (13:53.941)
Yeah, so I think a couple fronts, I'll maybe address both from maybe at a larger IMO kind of relationship front, and then I'll also just address the, you know, the impact on our, our strategy going down market. I'd say from an IMO perspective, I'll maybe even let Jason follow up on this too, is that I think it's, it's helpful that the way that, you know, it kind of, you know,

The way that it was, some interpretations that were out there in early April when they released that document, there was a wide range of expectations and interpretations. And on the most detrimental end to the IMO, it could have been very, very challenging from a compensation and kind of business model standpoint. So I think for Connecture and those IMOs and those relationships we've had for a long time, we feel good that.

it wasn't as detrimental. It's really unstuck a lot of things in terms of just how people are viewing the market and what they're going be doing from their tax strategy for 2024 to 2025. But I'll let Jason maybe answer that, and then I'll come back and maybe tackle the direct agent and its impact on that as well.

Jason Schmittgens (15:08.686)
Yeah, I mean, I think there was, like you said, different interpretations, ranging a broad spectrum there. Obviously, it's all kind of in a stay now, but I think that folks are feeling good and confident that they'll be able to continue to be compensated going forward even. And even at the time with the initial interpretation, many partners still felt that they were kind of out of the...

I guess, out of the role as a whole. So yeah, thank you pretty much for covering it there, Andrew.

Andrew Tutaj (15:40.483)
Yeah, I think the other thing that became kind of apparent, I think why you've seen a little bit of pullback from what CMS had originally proposed was that there's just a lot that an FMO does that we don't do as a technology partner that the services they provide. So I think there is a little bit of education that's happened. There are a lot of education that's happened even in the last 90 days, if not 180 days. So I guess that we're really happy to see that our FMOs can continue to operate and be

Jason Schmittgens (15:51.172)
Mm

Andrew Tutaj (16:11.003)
financially viable based on what's been pulled back. But yeah, pivoting to the agent, what's really fascinating is that we've definitely seen there's still a need. And like I said, it was kind of validating that even, like I said, we accelerated our timeline based on some of the potential impacts, but we always kind of said in theory, there's still a need for a direct agent solution. And we're hearing that, whether it's the conversations or...

you know, people directly signing up for the platform in the first two weeks or conversations where we were literally sat on a call with the carrier to basically get their participation in this platform. And there was a former agent on the team and the lady who said to us, she's just like, she's like, you guys are offering a solution. We're like, yeah. She's like, my God, like if I was an agent, would be, I definitely want this. And the next question was, well, how much you guys are charging? We said, well, we don't write in this is

a few months ago before I'd finalized things, there's something like, a hundred bucks a month. She's like, this is a no brainer. So I think there's definitely a market need. Is it everybody's solution? Does it match the price point for everybody? No. But I think, you know, what's out there and knowing that there's these things that the agents want and desire, it's kind of invalidating that even without some of the...

the rule kind of not going as aggressive and thankfully that it didn't. That there's still adoption and there's still interest in the solution.

Cory Schmidt (17:46.1)
What do you think, Andrew, I think I know the answer and I think you maybe touched on it at the top, but like, what do you think is the driver that's, you know, that, what do you think is the driver for those agents saying, yeah, it's easily worth that expense? where are they gaining efficiency or effectiveness as a result of purchasing a solution like this?

Andrew Tutaj (18:12.235)
Yeah, I'll let maybe Jason add on to this, I think, you know, not that there's not a cost and I don't want to diminish that, but like, you know, you think about the costs that we're asking a hundred bucks a month. I mean, that's basically two MA enrollments that you're driving. So I think just that ecosystem of, you know, we're connecting to a CRM like AgencyBloc and having that connectivity. mean, if you can.

Jason Schmittgens (18:14.146)
Mm

Andrew Tutaj (18:37.495)
can imagine just not having to rekey all that data between two systems. I think when we met with even some of the people at AgencyBloc's user conference in April, before we kind of really greenlit the project, there was a number of people that came up to you as we were kind of floating out the idea. And they were doing the math in their head. A lot of it was about just the efficiencies and what they can gain from it. And then even just the accuracy of what they could have on all one.

platform.

Jason Schmittgens (19:09.21)
Yeah, so having one place to log in and have as many of their carriers as possible, know, this AUP is going to be a very, very busy one with.

So the impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act, we hear as many as 70, 80% of beneficiaries are gonna need to shop their plan. So any way that we can increase efficiencies at all, and having just one login and one access to a platform, and then also being able to sync up their data and their CRM, as much time savings opportunities as there are out there to be had, I think it's gonna be more critical than ever for agents to take advantage of this.

Cory Schmidt (19:43.082)
Makes complete sense. can't imagine logging into three, four, ten different solutions based on which carrier, you know, that we're trying to write, you know, that I'm trying to write the business for. It just seems, yeah, it seems excessive. One of the things I did notice, and this sort of ties into the question Tim asked around CMS, like, I don't know if it was tied to that, but it felt like, you know, attending Medicareians and just seeing what was going on in the industry.

I've heard of some other similar offerings to PC Edge for Agents that are coming to market that are touted as free and there's a saying about free, right? It's never really free. There's always some sort of a catch, but I'm curious, what do you guys feel differentiates the PC Edge for Agents solution from the other quote free solutions in the market?

Jason Schmittgens (20:23.013)
Thanks

Jason Schmittgens (20:37.104)
Yeah, yeah, a couple of things. mean, I think the teams have been very hard at work in expanding the network of carriers that are participating in the platform. You know, we've got access to over 160 carriers to view on the platform already, which is pretty incredible. You you mentioned free, it's built on a platform that many agents have been using, whether it be through appliance or through the carriers for many years now. So there's a comfortability level of being able to use that same.

know, trusted technology. do consider ourselves to be the trusted source for all things Medicare. Our marketing team will like that plug. But it's, you know, the accuracy of the drug pricing. consider ourselves to the gold standard in drug pricing. And then, you know, just knowing and having a comfort level that we are truly, strictly a technology provider. are not an agency, not

accessing or reaching out to clients or anything like that that are being put in there. So it's just a matter of that trust level with us having been in the industry for as long as we have and using the familiar platform.

Tim Robinson (21:48.878)
All right, so as we kind of near the end here, really, again, great to have you guys on and learn more about the product. And Jason, one of the things you definitely hit upon, and Andrew as well, is this is really meant to make agents' lives better, right? So they don't have to go to several different

login several different times, et cetera. This should be a huge time saver, especially for those that are obviously using multiple uplines to meet the needs of their beneficiaries. So with that being said, how can agents interested in the product learn more about it, get more information and sign up for the solution?

Jason Schmittgens (22:40.644)
Yeah, absolutely. we, a couple different ways, you know, on.

our website connecture .com. There's a whole section dedicated to the Planned Career Edge for Agent platform where you can learn more about the carriers that are participating, making sure that aligns with the carriers that the agents would need to have on the platform for it to be a viable solution. Right, we have a shared email inbox. It's pcedgedirect at connecture .com that agents can reach out directly or some of the contact us form there on our website. you know, the team would be more than happy to schedule time to discuss the platform with any individuals.

Want to learn more?

Tim Robinson (23:18.03)
Great, and Cory, guess, it probably, it may be a cart before the horse here, but Jason, appreciate that. When is this actually going live and gonna be available?

Jason Schmittgens (23:30.628)
Yeah, so it's available now for agents to start to subscribe. They can go and create their profile, know, enter in their national producer number, which is how we'll.

will be able to validate the carriers that they're certified and licensed to sell that are participating. But the goal is right for this to be a plan year 2025 platform. So we've got a little bit of time here to go in, start passing in those profiles, get all the information updated in the Connecture platform before we start being able to actually review 2025 plan options on 10/1 and ultimately enroll for 1/1 effectives on 10/15

Tim Robinson (24:07.764)
Awesome. look, I, again, I'll say it again. I know spend some time together at various conferences and various meeting rooms. but really, really appreciate you guys coming on the podcast and sharing your insights, thoughts, excited to bring this, you know, joint integration, this joint, solution to market with you guys and,

Gosh, I'm sure we're gonna be seeing each other very soon in person and I look forward to that. Cory, at some point, maybe on the next one, we're gonna have to sync up on the latest related to our grilling updates. It's been too long and we'll have to catch up on that. So with that being said, thanks again for tuning into another edition of the InsureTech Building Blocs.

Jason Schmittgens (24:37.284)
you

Tim Robinson (25:02.751)
And we'll catch you all soon. Appreciate it.

Jason Schmittgens (25:06.329)
Awesome, thanks for having us.