With more individuals, families, and businesses gaining health coverage than ever before, new populations of Americans are flocking to health insurance brokers for help. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s survey of SHOP users, 74 percent of small businesses relied on brokers to guide them in their benefit decisions. In such a complex industry, brokers are spending the majority of their time explaining health insurance complexities. Seventy-two percent of a broker’s time is solely dedicated to helping explain coverage. This attention to detail and expert level advice leads to overwhelming satisfaction. Health plan members not only employ brokers, they trust them for one simple reason: they make the health insurance process better.

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 Inefficiencies abound with unnecessary spreadsheets, reliance on outdated information, delayed methods of communicating with members, including snail mail and even faxing.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

Embracing technology allows brokers to differentiate themselves within a hypercompetitive market and even thrive during this time of growing pains. And, as technological adoption becomes a growing expectation across all industries, there are three reasons why brokers would be gravely mistaken to not overcome a fear of change:

1. Increased opportunity: Technological adoption allows brokers to modernize their business, as well as reduce the time it takes to close more deals by streamlining core work processes. It also streamlines the process for prospects through information transparency and increased engagement. The use of technology provides a sustainable solution for the broker industry to attract and retain clients through one seamless and engaging user experience.

2. Customer demand: Over 53 million millennials help make up today’s working population in the United States, representing more than 1 in every 3 American workers. The customers who brokers have represented for years are not only getting younger, they’re more entrepreneurial and tech savvy. Although this labor force still sees brokers as an invaluable piece of the puzzle, they are expecting their business advisors to provide seamless, convenient, instant answers like they are used to in all other economic transactions.

3. Advancing competition: New technology companies have emerged, grown, and even stumbled. Zenefits is one such company that has become known as the broker dis-intermediator. This name is a misnomer for Zenefits because they are not replacing the role of brokers; Zenefits is the broker. Their high-growth revenue model is predicated on collecting lucrative broker commission. Tech start-ups like this offer technology to simplify processes for businesses in return for being designated as the “broker of record” and thus earning the commission when they assist the business in finding insurance. And Zenefits isn’t the first, or the last tech company that will come to disrupt the broker industry.

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