2023 AEP Benchmark Survey Results
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Bryn Loeffler
Download the full AEP Benchmark Survey Results at the end of this post.
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AEP - The Playoffs of Enrollment
This time of year, football fans congregate around buckets of chicken wings, nachos, and beer. It’s not just football, it’s the playoffs.
Lucky for Medicare agents, the playoffs aren’t limited to professional sports. While October signals baseball playoffs (go Red Sox!), it’s also the beginning of Annual Enrollment Period, or the playoffs of Medicare. The opportunity for growth swells between October and December, but so does the chaos and the pressure. At Fairstreet, we learned that many agents had similar questions surrounding AEP:
How many applications do agents like my typically write?
What are experienced agents doing to reach new clients?
How do agents use technology to make AEP easier?
Enter the FairStreet 2023 AEP Benchmark Report. In December 2022 we surveyed 170 agents from around the country and published the findings to help agents grow their business and learn from a community of like-minded agents.
The Importance and Inefficiency of AEP
Everyone can agree AEP is a chaotic time, and agents feel the pressure to take care of their existing clients and also grow during these 7 intense weeks. We found that 61% of all 2022 applications were written during AEP and each agent averaged 71 new applications.
In addition to enrolling new clients, agents need to conduct plan reviews for each existing client (424 on average!). Agents spent 77 minutes per plan review, which adds up to 544 hours of client reviews during AEP.
On top of meetings agents have back office work: contacting clients, compiling updated drug lists, sending quotes, booking client meetings, submitting applications, tracking enrollment status, etc. It’s no wonder over half of all agents surveyed said that their stress levels during AEP are 7 or higher.
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Based on these stats, it’s also not surprising that more experienced agents write more applications. With all of these complicated variables and time-consuming efforts, it’s no wonder that the agents who have been around the block have figured out how to more efficiently manage this workload.
Agents who have 1-5 years of experience wrote an average of 56 apps during AEP while their counterparts with 10-20 years of experience wrote an average of 94 apps. Talk about a slam dunk (yes, we’re including all pro sports leagues now).
Before you get discouraged, experience isn’t the only indicator of success during AEP. The data shows a correlation between the number of clients and the number of AEP apps, with apps growing significantly after an agent reaches 100 clients.
How do Agents Run and Grow Their Business?
Regardless of agent experience and the number of clients, the AEP Benchmark report shows that most agents want to grow their business but aren't satisfied with the way things are going. Agents in the survey rated their satisfaction with business growth at a 6 out of 10, and referrals are still the primary path to business growth, even with the rise of digital marketing.
How do we fix this? Unfortunately we don’t have a Hail Mary to miraculously save the Medicare enrollment process from itself, but agents are using tools to mitigate the playoff chaos of AEP. 77% of agents agree that the most important tool to manage their Medicare clients and promote business growth is a CRM, followed by a quoting platform and then call recording software. The key to running an efficient business is having a single platform that can do it all, instead of managing data across multiple platforms that don't work together.
Download the full results
Are you curious about how you compare to other agents during AEP? Download the full report.
If you want to prepare for the next playoff season, or understand why I have split sports allegiances, schedule a demo with FairStreet!