Derek Sprouse, President of Sprouse Insurance, is a forward-thinking, third generation independent agent in Northwest Ohio. He was also one of the first agents to utilize OIA's R.I.S.E. report – a benchmarking report that takes your high-level operations data and compares it to your peer agencies from across the state, those within your local region, and those at the same premium volume.
Says Sprouse, “I did the R.I.S.E. report because I thought it would be a good opportunity to see some unbiased information on how I was doing and how my competitors, or peers, depending on where they are located, were doing against us.”
Sprouse was able to compare his agency's growth, how competitive his salary and benefit packages are, and gain insights into other critical performance metrics.
Of the information contained in the R.I.S.E. report Sprouse remarked, “That’s not something I felt like I could necessarily get out of our management system. It knows a lot of things, but it doesn’t know what everybody else is doing. I thought it was a really good opportunity for us to leverage a bigger pool of information so we could make some strategic plans and changes.”
When asked if any of the results in his R.I.S.E. report surprised him, he said “I knew we had younger people, and we’ve tried to do a good job of having multiple generations in the agency, but we were very young compared to the industry and our peers.”
Remarking further about his experience, Sprouse shared “OIA was the best choice because it’s unbiased, number one, and number two you already have a lot of the data, number three, you know me and what we do.”
“I think that consultants, depending on where they come from, geographically, may not understand exactly where we are, what we do. Every state is different; the more that someone is familiar with you, the more they can tell you how you’re doing. I knew I could trust OIA.”
Learn more about how a R.I.S.E. report can help your agency
You don’t need to be an OIA member to access the report, you simply need to be an independent insurance agency principal. Get started on yours today!
