With more individuals, families, and businesses gaining healthcoverage than ever before, new populations of Americans areflocking to health insurance brokers for help. According to theRobert Wood Johnson Foundation’s survey of SHOPusers, 74 percent of small businesses relied onbrokers to guide them in their benefit decisions. In such a complexindustry, brokers are spending the majority of their timeexplaining health insurance complexities. Seventy-two percent of a broker’s time issolely dedicated to helping explain coverage. This attention todetail and expert level advice leads to overwhelming satisfaction.Health plan members not only employ brokers, they trust them forone simple reason: they make the health insurance processbetter.

Yet the process brokers use themselves is far from perfect.Inefficiencies abound with unnecessary spreadsheets, reliance onoutdated information, delayed methods of communicating withmembers, including snail mail and even faxing. The amount of timeand effort put into this needless back and forth make the healthinsurance broker industry ripe for technological innovation.

Embracing technology allows brokers to differentiate themselveswithin a hypercompetitive market and even thrive during this timeof growing pains. And, as technological adoption becomes a growingexpectation across all industries, there are three reasons whybrokers would be gravely mistaken to not overcome a fear ofchange:

1. Increased opportunity: Technologicaladoption allows brokers to modernize their business, as well asreduce the time it takes to close more deals by streamlining corework processes. It also streamlines the process for prospectsthrough information transparency and increased engagement. The useof technology provides a sustainable solution for the brokerindustry to attract and retain clients through one seamless andengaging user experience.

2. Customer demand: Over 53 million millennials help make uptoday’s working population in the United States, representing morethan 1 in every 3 American workers. The customers who brokers haverepresented for years are not only getting younger, they’re moreentrepreneurial and tech savvy. Although this labor force stillsees brokers as an invaluable piece of the puzzle, they areexpecting their business advisors to provide seamless, convenient,instant answers like they are used to in all other economictransactions.

3. Advancing competition: New technologycompanies have emerged, grown, and even stumbled. Zenefits is one such company that has becomeknown as the broker dis-intermediator. This name is a misnomer forZenefits because they are not replacing the role ofbrokers; Zenefits is the broker. Theirhigh-growth revenue model is predicated on collecting lucrativebroker commission. Tech start-ups like this offer technology tosimplify processes for businesses in return for being designated asthe “broker of record” and thus earning the commission when theyassist the business in finding insurance. And Zenefits isn’t thefirst, or the last tech company that will come to disrupt thebroker industry.

To attract the new digital consumer, brokers must also bedigital consumers. In such an evolving health insurance landscape,these are the brokers that will be welcomed with open arms.