The DCC Story

Working with property and casualty insurance carriers in the early 2000s, Deep Customer Connections’ founder, Nort Salz, noted that agents write the bulk of their policies with the carriers that make it easiest for them to do their jobs.

Yet time and time again, we saw carriers struggle to accurately track and manage their competitive advantage related to “ease of doing business.”

The issue loomed large across the industry because there was:

• No hard data about how much “ease of doing business” impacts independent agents’ buying decisions
• No common understanding of what factors contribute to making it easier for agents to write business
• No agreement about the relative importance of the different criteria
• No tools to measure carriers’ performance against those factors

To solve those problems, we immersed ourselves in research, interviews, and focus groups to develop a comprehensive model of what makes it easier for agents to place their business with one carrier over another. In 2003, we launched our first client Benchmark study.

As the market has evolved, we continuously refine and validate the DCC Index and our market intelligence tools.

Over the years, DCC has become synonymous with understanding the dynamics of the complex and ever-changing nature of the carrier-agent relationship. We’re proud of our mission to help property and casualty carriers identify the most effective ways to improve their performance.