Spectrum Insurance Group is a full-service independent insurance agency serving thousands of businesses and individuals throughout Wisconsin. As one of the largest agencies in the state, Spectrum offers commercial insurance, employee benefits, health insurance, and personal insurance. Spectrum Insurance has access to over 30 carriers, ensuring it can find the right coverage for its customers’ needs. But Spectrum doesn’t stop at writing policies—the agency provides a range of value-added services designed to empower its clients. Mineral® is the flagship in that value-added services lineup.

Unlocking the spectrum.

Kristeanna Crick is Spectrum’s Client Experience Specialist. Her role is to help clients take full advantage of the agency’s ancillary offerings, including Mineral. “There are so many resources available to our clients, primarily through Mineral, but those resources were a bit of a hidden treasure. My job is to put them front and center and help our clients find value in that treasure.”

Mineral is the offering that gets the most traction among Spectrum’s clients. “Everyone prefers Mineral’s modern user interface, how easy it is to use, and how much the platform has to offer,” Crick says. “While we have other resources, like Zywave, available to clients, Mineral is the one that gets used.”

Spectrum Insurance Group includes the Mineral Platform at no cost as part of its offering to commercial and employee benefit clients. “Our clients don’t just get Mineral—they get me too!” adds Crick. “Many of our clients are small businesses without an HR department. I can be a resource for them by asking the right questions and directing them to where they can get answers.”

Clients recognize the value.

Among Mineral’s spectrum of benefits, Crick has one favorite – Mineral Intelligence, the “compliance watchdog” portion of the Mineral Platform that continually monitors thousands of state and federal legislation changes and keeps Spectrum and its clients informed of the changes that impact their businesses. “It’s a great way to keep our clients informed and position Spectrum as an expert.”

The Mineral Experts are one of the most utilized products within the Mineral Platform. “Our clients can speak to a real HR and compliance expert to help them navigate a complex employment landscape,” Crick says. “To a small company without internal HR resources, this is priceless. There’s so much risk in getting HR wrong, and we’re in the business of helping our clients mitigate risk. Mineral plays a big part in that.”

Another popular feature among Spectrum clients is Mineral’s vast content library. “It’s very easy to search for precisely what you want,” explains Crick. “You can filter the search by form or by state, for example.”

Competitive advantage.

As Spectrum works to grow its client base, Mineral is playing an increasingly important role. For example, newer agents with the agency are revisiting their previous clients after their non-compete has ended to let them know about the Spectrum Value Added Services, including Mineral’s outstanding features. Spectrum agents now promote Mineral during their conversations with clients and prospects. “Often, we’ll even set up a meeting where I’ll demonstrate some of the amazing features allowing the client to see a sneak peek of the value-added service we can provide,” adds Crick.

Through the Partner Enablement feature within the platform, Mineral even provides Spectrum templates for promotional flyers the agency can brand with their logo and contact information and share with clients and prospects. The flyers highlight specific industries, allowing Spectrum’s agents to showcase the agency’s value to construction companies, manufacturers, or nonprofits.

“We see Mineral as a competitive advantage for the agency,” says Crick. “Once our clients begin using the Mineral Platform, the value they derive from it keeps them with us. They don’t want to lose the benefits they’ve been enjoying.”

Driving client engagement.

Spectrum estimates that 90% of the agency’s commercial clients have signed up for the Mineral offering, an impressive statistic. “One of the most popular features among our clients is the Smart Employee Handbook builder,” Crick says. “Not only can they quickly build a compliant handbook, but Mineral also helps maintain employee handbooks. Mineral is efficient and proactive on the updates by notifying our clients in an email or on their Mineral dashboard. The client will then review the law or regulation in their handbook. If they want to accept the change, it’s a click of a button for the client to comply with the most current laws and regulations. That’s a huge time and money savings for busy businesses. It can cost thousands for a company to create and maintain an employee handbook, but this is free to our clients.”

And Mineral boasts a modern, intuitive user interface that Spectrum’s clients frequently praise. “Clients tell us they like Mineral because it’s simple to navigate and find what they’re looking for,” notes Crick. “They log in to Mineral right from our website, and the platform is branded with our information for consistency.”

Crick has begun monitoring Mineral’s utilization reports and is watching the rates climb higher. “We see an increase in the numbers each month,” she says. “In the last 18-month period, our clients have completed 44% more courses through Mineral and have created 99% more benefits documents. Clearly, they’re finding value in Mineral.”

Spectrum includes other tools in its value-added services lineup, but Mineral is the solution that receives the most attention and praise from clients. “There’s so much to Mineral,” Crick says. “Nothing else out there has the extent of HR features, from employee handbooks, compliance assessments, access to forms and a document library, to live support from HR experts.”

Advantages run across the spectrum.

While Spectrum provides the Mineral Platform to clients at no charge, clients exploring the platform may see additional premium offerings, such as Guided HR Compliance or Anonymous Reporting. “It’s great to see clients exploring all they can do with the platform, and we have clients that elect to add on various pieces to augment what we provide,” adds Crick.

Mineral directly rewards partners when clients subscribe to one of the premium services through the Mineral Advantage Program, making it a win for everyone.

Service that goes beyond.

While Spectrum considers the Mineral offering primarily a client benefit, Crick says she also spends significant time on the platform, advancing her skills and knowledge set. “I especially like many of the informational videos—they’re short, right-on point, and they hold my attention,” she says. “Also, I love that the chat option is always on screen, and when you click it, you get a live expert, not a chatbot. I’ll often get the same agent I’ve spoken with previously, and they remember me and our agency. To me, that’s impressive.”

Spectrum has nothing but praise for the support they receive through Mineral. “Mineral has top-notch customer service—it’s clear they want to help us succeed,” concludes Crick. “Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, I contacted them with a question from a prospective client. They didn’t have to help me with that, but they did—providing great advice that helped us win the sale. That shows they care, and that matters to us.”

When you’ve been doing something for nearly 140 years, you tend to get really good at it. That’s especially true of Morris & Garritano, which has been protecting what matters most to the people of California’s Central Coast since 1885. Specializing in commercial, employee benefits and personal coverage, Morris & Garritano is one of the state’s largest independently owned insurance agencies. While the people have changed over time, the agency’s unwavering commitment to educating, advocating for, and insuring its client’s businesses has not. This commitment led Morris & Garritano to include Mineral in its offerings to serve clients and protect their most valuable asset – their business.

An essential element

As a complement to its insurance offerings, Morris & Garritano provides human resources consulting services, which includes direct access to an in-house human resource consultant who can address complex and specific HR issues. The agency acts as an extension of its clients’ HR departments and believes in a balanced, relationship-driven approach, advising mandated standards to ensure client’s compliance while narrowing in on practical solutions that make the most sense for their business. The combination of Morris & Garritano’s professional service team, extensive client services, and advanced technology is foundational to its balanced approach to benefits administration. The Mineral Platform is an essential element in that technology enhancement.

Morris & Garritano offers Mineral to all its business clients at no additional cost. “It fits squarely within our business model,” says Kely Blackburn, HR Business Consultant with the company. “We’re unlike our competitors by offering full-cycle HR Services and have been doing so for over two decades, with our clients finding tremendous value in it. To ensure our scalability, we partnered with Mineral to support our various HR functions which allows us to narrow in on what we do best.”

Blackburn sees Mineral as a natural fit within the insurance sector. “We see a large overlap between many HR functions and insurance, in workers compensation, leaves of absence, and accommodation, for example. By offering resources and guidance in these areas, clients reduce their exposure to risk, and some of our clients have reduced their liability insurance costs as well.”

Building collaborative relationships

One of the agency’s core values is building collaborative relationships with clients. Blackburn believes Mineral is helping Morris & Garritano achieve that goal. “We’re more than an insurance broker for our clients,” Blackburn explains. “We understand small business and know how challenging it can be to get human resources activities done right. Many of our clients don’t have an internal HR department, so we take on much of that function for them — and back them up with resources and expertise to help them stay on track.”

But Mineral is not just a resource for smaller organizations, large businesses also find the platform valuable. Running a large-scale operation has its pain points, especially when it comes to training and development. Several large clients have over 150 active users, and some have utilized over $35K in Learn training courses, while total client usage of Learn is nearing $300K in value in 2022.

Blackburn has developed a formal onboarding process to introduce new clients to the Mineral Platform. From a welcome email with login instructions, a quick start infographic, to a comprehensive user guide and personalized demonstrations, clients learn of the tools and resources available through Morris & Garritano and the Mineral Platform. It’s a customized one-on-one approach with clients to ensure their success with the platform.

Thousands of dollars in value added

And the service does get used — by over 900 of the agency’s clients. To date, over 170 employee handbooks have been created by Morris & Garritano clients using the Mineral Platform. “And as of 2022, our clients have utilized over $100K in value with Mineral handbook features alone,” Blackburn says.

Employee handbooks are not just nice-to-have assets; they are essential business documents. Yet, for clients of Morris & Garritano, creating a handbook is time-consuming, complex, and expensive. “In my experience, it costs a company about $5,000+ to create an employee handbook, and easily 40+ hours of staff time on a good day,” notes Blackburn. “Using Smart Employee Handbook, our customers can create their own employee handbooks at no cost with the necessary compliance language already there, which helps to streamline the policy development process.”

But not only that, Mineral continue to offer the firm’s clients peace of mind by continually monitoring client policies to ensure their compliance when new laws come into play. “No more going down the Google rabbit hole to find what changes have been made,” says Blackburn. “Instead, Mineral offers policy alerts to overcome these challenges and has policy language ready to go.

The Benefits Document Creator is another tool Blackburn says is popular among clients. “There are literally hundreds of standard forms applicable to HR. Unfortunately, finding or creating them is time consuming, and you have to be sure you’re working with the most current version, or the version that applies to your jurisdiction. With the Mineral Platform, all the forms are within easy reach and always up to date.”

Increase ROI and conversion rates

The agency sees the Mineral Platform as a competitive advantage. “We’re able to clearly demonstrate our value to clients and prospects, and our HR Consulting Services, partnered with Mineral, adds to the value our clients see and experience,” Blackburn says. “In HR, the goal is to stay relevant and current – that’s key to your success. You need to be a relevant resource to the employees and employers, while staying current on what employment laws are at play. Both contribute to our client’s success in decreasing risks associated with managing people in business.”

Mineral also allows Morris & Garritano to increase engagement with existing clients. “Because our services are combined with the Mineral Platform, we have more interactions with our clients than a typical agency might,” says Blackburn. “And we see the benefits of those interactions in our retention rates, with many clients continuing with us for decades.”

The increased engagement rates factor into the 28x return on investment Morris & Garritano is realizing with Mineral. In fact, the company’s return outperforms average partner standards, many who typically see an already generous 8x ROI with the solution. It speaks both to the power of the Platform and Morris & Garritano’s commitment to its clients.

Solving the tough challenges

As the employment landscape becomes more complex, Morris & Garritano’s comprehensive approach provides clients with direct access to tools and one-on-one expertise to help them solve tough challenges surrounding compliance, human resources, employee education and advocacy, and claims management.

“I’d recommend the Mineral Platform to other agencies wanting to increase the client value proposition. There are hundreds of resources available to help me — and our clients — solve the real challenges and streamline manual tasks,” Blackburn concludes. “Mineral allows users to focus on making an impact, allowing them more time to think strategically about how to succeed rather than simply putting out fires. Honestly, Mineral makes my job so much easier, and I know it does the same for our clients.”