Membership Benefits

Your success in the insurance profession is the primary focus of the PIA Association for Nebraska & Iowa.

In addition to being a part of a dedicated community of other professional independent agents, your PIA membership offers an unmatched value in tools and resources specifically tailored to help advance your agency.

Learn more below.

RESOURCES - AGENCY MANAGEMENT & PLANNING

Crisis Resource Center

When a crisis hits, it’s the planning and preparation that really counts. Introducing Ready For Everything – a crisis information hub brought to you by The PIA Partnership. Our Ready For Everything toolkit gives agents resources on planning, remote working, and employee and customer communications. We’ve curated and organized a host of industry articles, videos and podcasts, and provided key takeaways in an effort to make it as easy as possible for insurance agencies to be more prepared – when the next crisis hits. You will need a separate PIA National username and password to access Ready for Everything, but if you have any questions, please give us a call at (402) 392-1611.



Agency Journey Mapping

Whether you are planning for the eventual sale of your agency, planning for the unexpected, or simply want to value your agency, PIA’s Agency Journey Mapping program will put you on the right path. We’ll help you understand the challenges and best practices of agency ownership transfer, so you can create a perpetuation/succession plan for your agency. And you’ll receive access to dozens of tools to help you do it. But I'm not ready to sell my agency! You make decisions every day that set the stage for your options long-term. Agency Journey Mapping helps you see the impact of your actions today on your agency’s value, ability to respond to new opportunities, and preparation for the unexpected. The program addresses succession and perpetuation planning. But it’s not only for agents headed for the exit. It’s so much more. It is designed to give agency owners – at every stage – control of their future by investing in a little planning today. Step 1: Attend live or on-demand seminar. Step 2: Access a library of resources. Step 3: Develop a customized plan for YOUR agency.

You will need a separate PIA National username and password to access Agency Jouney Mapping, but if you have any questions, please give us a call at (402) 392-1611.



Blueprint for Agency Success

At PIA, our mission is to help agents, like you, throughout your career. We have developed the PIA Blueprint for Agency Success to provide materials and resources that can take independent insurance agents from start-up to sustained success. Sections of the Blueprint include: Business Planning - addresses insurance agency start-up considerations from formation of the business entity to insurance licensing to budgeting and finance to branding Growth Strategy - outlines agency automation, producer development and operational policies, procedures, and workflows Agency Continuity - provides templates for business continuity planning, disaster planning, and leadership development You will need a separate PIA National username and password to access Ready for Everything, but if you have any questions, please give us a call at (402) 392-1611.



Winning @Virtual

Our 3-part toolkit will help you make the most of today’s digital solutions. You can use it to: assess your virtual readiness; decide which technologies are right for you; calculate ROI on the solutions you choose; select vendors; apply best practices for maximum results; and learn from other agencies. You will need a separate PIA National username and password to access Winning@Virtual, but if you have any questions, please give us a call at (402) 392-1611.



Cyber 101

Cyber 101 was created to help educate agents and their clients about the most common cyber risks faced by small and mid-sized businesses as well as the business practices and insurance coverages that can reduce those risks. You will need a separate PIA National username and password to access Cyber 101, but if you have any questions, please give us a call at (402) 392-1611.



RESOURCES - EMPLOYER

Ideal Traits, Insurance Agency Hiring Made Easy

IdealTraits is the go-to hiring tool for insurance agencies across America. If you are having trouble finding top talent, or you would like to improve your hiring strategy, IdealTraits may be for you. This new PIA program ensures agents can use a comprehensive tool to hire top performers for their agencies. Step 1 - Post Jobs: Build the best job postings with versatile templates for ZipRecruiter, Google for Jobs, Indeed, Glassdoor, and 100+ job boards. Step 2 - Applicant Tracking: View resumes, comment, rate, organize, and move your candidates through hiring stages--all on the IdealTraits platform! Step 3 - Send Pre-Hire Assessments: Pre-screen candidates to predict job performance, all from within the system! Step 4 - Identify and Hire: Use assessment results to identify strengths and weaknesses and hire the best candidate.



Online and Classroom CE

The PIA NE IA is known nationwide as one of the premier states when it comes to education! Partnering with The National Alliance, the AIMS Society, and FISCE, plus hot topics for the Farm Seminar and Annual Convention. PIA offers close to 200 options and 750 CE hrs each year, including pre-licensing. Learn more on our Education page.



PIA Omnia – Behavioral Assessment

Protect your agency from bad hires and high turnover with the Omnia Assessment! In just 10 minutes or less, our behavioral assessment tool gives you the insight to take the guesswork out of personnel decisions. Whether you are hiring a new employee, deciding on future roles for current employees, team building or creating a succession plan for your agency, Omnia can help.



Sample Producer and Employment Agreements

You can get FREE sample producer contracts and employee contracts from PIAW. Developed for PIA, these contracts contain non-compete and non-piracy clauses, as well as other standard employment provisions. We can email these word documents so you can customize them with your agency information. If interested, please contact PIA at 402-392-1611.



Winning @Talent

Winning@Talent is a 3-part toolkit featuring intuitive tools that take agency employers through a simple journey that starts with determining if their agency is well positioned to attract quality candidates and ends with a happy, productive employee. Part 1 - Are You Ready to Recruit?, focuses on helping agencies assess whether they are ready to recruit. In this section, we help agency owners and managers assess their employer brand, provide tools to help them build and strengthen it, and offer best practices on how to make it resonate across communication channels and social networks. Part 2 - Sourcing, Recruiting and Hiring, focuses on sourcing potential hiring prospects, recruiting them into your agency and ultimately hiring them. This section offers resources and best practices to help agency owners and managers find, screen, interview and evaluate candidates in ways that will help them reduce their time to fill key positions, build their talent pipeline and meet long-term recruiting goals. Part 3 - Retaining Your Best Employees, focuses on how agencies can retain their best employees because employee retention is vital to growing any agency. This section provides best practices and resources that agency owners and managers can share with their employees to help those employees with their own career development.



RESOURCES - AGENCY MARKETING

Agency Marketing Guide

Each summer PIA publishes the PIA Agency Marketing Guide. This annual publication helps PIA members stay ahead of the curve when it comes to marketing their services in the modern insurance marketplace.



Personalized Print Advertisements

PIA has an extensive collection of print advertisements that PIA members can run in local publications, customized with their agency logo and contact information and (optionally) a company logo. Most ads are available in both English and Spanish. Ads can also be printed for use as flyers or as inserts in publications. Ads are available in a variety of sizes, in color as well as black and white. For more information please contact the PIA office at 402-392-1611 or email office@pianeia.com.



Direct Mail Advertising / Digital Advertising

PIA members can access direct mail and digital advertising services in the PIA DMV. Customizable postcard templates are available to use with the USPS Every Door Direct Mail Program and Targeted Direct Mail. PIA members can maximize their impact and reach by adding-on targeted digital advertising to their order.



PIA Design & Print Services

PIA Design & Print offers a collaborative design experience tailored for small businesses, insurance agencies and associations.
Our talented team specializes in print and digital media design that's engaging and effective. Logo design Ad design Flyers Magazines Brochures Trade show displays Social media graphics Newsletters Open communication with our team Quality control from start to finish PIA Design & Print delivers high-quality printing services from our full-service in-house print shop. We print in-house to deliver the most value to our clients. From pre-designed products to custom consumer-facing direct mail brochures, our experienced print shop team has over 60 years of experience working with small business to deliver quality and precision. Our team specializes in: Full-color printing Custom print jobs Magazine printing Mailing design.print@pia.org (800) 424-4244



INSURANCE PRODUCTS FOR YOUR AGENCY

Cyber Liability Insurance

Now PIA members can sell the same great PIA cyber insurance coverage that many have already purchased for their own agency. PIA’s cyber insurance is the first cyber insurance program tailor-made for small and medium-sized businesses. The PIA enhanced cyber insurance policy covers both first- and third-party loss for the most common cyber risks such as social engineering, funds transfer fraud, ransomware, network interruption, data breach, network security, and media liability. In addition to the seven coverage parts, PIA members’ clients are provided with special PIA enhancements and reduced rates compared to ABAIS’s standard program for social engineering coverage.

PIA members who sell the PIA cyber insurance receive 12.5% in sales commission.

Getting started is easy. Start protecting your clients today.

Haven’t purchased cyber insurance for your agency yet? Contact the PIA office at 402-392-1611.

PIA cyber insurance is offered through ABA Insurance Services and Great American E&S Insurance Company (rated A+ by A.M. Best). ABA Insurance Services’ history with cyber insurance dates to 2001. With deep institutional knowledge, ABA Insurance Services offers the coverage and claims expertise needed to protect against today’s exposures.



E&O Insurance

At PIA, we’re not just E&O professionals, we’re independent agents just like you. We understand your needs and we know the marketplace. We have access to multiple markets, with differing appetites, so chances are we can find the coverage and price that’s right for you.



INSURANCE PRODUCTS TO SELL

PIA Market Access

PIA Market Access enables PIA members to grow their book of business with: -Access to more than 50 national and specialty carriers -Real-time rating for personal and commercial lines -Ownership of your book of business and no exit fees -Two free months of service and thereafter low monthly access fees -Higher PIA member commission rates



Cyber Liability Coverage For Your Clients

The same standard coverage that is available to your agency, is also available to your clients. The need for cyber insurance is real. Cyber insurance protects businesses from computer, network and Internet-based risks. The policy covers both first and third-party losses. Every business that uses the Internet, accepts credit cards or uses a system network needs cyber insurance. If you answer yes to any of these questions, you need a cyber insurance policy: -Does your business accept credit card payments? -Does your business bank online? -Does your business use Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn? -Does your business store sensitive customer or employee data?



Flood Insurance Through the Hartford

Since 2004, PIA and The Hartford have joined together to provide PIA member agents the opportunity to offer your customers flood insurance through The Hartford, a WYO company. The program is available to PIA members and their policyholders in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. PIA members earn great commissions on flood insurance sales with The Hartford and, if they want, a flood insurance processing center that does most of the heavy lifting for them.