How Insurance Compliance is Like America’s Guilty Pleasure: The Hot Dog

This National Hot Dog Day, relish in the joy of not knowing how the sausage is made

Insurance compliance is a lot like the great American guilty pleasure: the hot dog. Everyone loves the tasty end-result – including the revenue that comes along with running a successful and compliant insurance business – but no one enjoys being deep in the process of how it’s made. 

Happy National Hot Dog Day! If you didn’t even know this was a recognized day of celebration, then you must not be one of the millions of Americans consuming an estimated 20 billion hot dogs each year! 

OK, so it’s not as well known or established a holiday as Independence Day earlier this month, but today’s the day to honor the humble hot dog and the joy this mystery meat delivers to so many of us, especially during the summer months. 

How are hot dogs made?  

Let’s face it, some things are better left unknown. If you’re asking this question, consider that you probably don’t want to know the answer. We won’t spoil this great American summer culinary tradition for you, but we’ll tell you that the process isn’t pretty or fun. 

The same can be said for insurance license compliance. Insurance carriers, agencies, brokers, MGAs/MGUs, and individual producers know that keeping up on state-by-state license requirements is a process so unappealing to manage that it gives hot-dog-making a run for its money. 

The manual, complex, and costly “sausage making” of producer compliance

For insurance industry professionals and those charged with keeping everyone compliant with all applicable federal, state, and territory-specific laws, being deep in the weeds can be tedious, painful, and about as appetizing as the inner workings of a sausage factory.

For insurance agencies, the producer license compliance management can look like this: 

1. Try to collect all the information and paperwork you need to verify the producer’s resident license, apply for additional licenses, and get necessary carrier appointments. 
2. Remind the producer that you still need all of these items. 
3. Look through a packet of information the producer returned and identify missing pieces of information. 
4. Ask the producer to send you the missing pieces of information. 
5. Wait, remind, rinse, repeat. 

For insurance carriers, it’s something along the lines of: 

1. Send agents a packet of paperwork and a checklist of everything you need them to return along with it. 
2. Wait… 
3. Remind the producer you’re still waiting. 
4. Review what the producer returns and identify any gaps in the information you need. 
5. Cross reference with state DOI websites and other sources. 
6. Notify the producer of missing information or discrepancies. 
7. Finally get the producer appointed, only to have them never sell a policy. Or, take too long to get them appointed and miss out on sales. 

And for individual producers, getting onboarded at an agency and/or appointed by a carrier can look like: 

1. Being given large packets of paper forms to fill out. Or, best case, a large list of different online applications and forms to complete. 
2. Waiting on someone to review your documents and cross-reference them against other sources of truth, manually. 
3. Getting multiple emails and calls telling you about specific pieces of information you forgot to include the first time around. 
4. Going on a scavenger hunt for documents you need to deliver before the agency or carrier can move forward. 
5. Losing out on sales because you’re not properly credentialed in time. 

These are just brief versions of the complex, costly, and time-consuming work that traditionally goes into getting producers licensed, appointed, and ready to sell. Your process may actually be longer and more dreadful than these examples. And we haven’t even gotten into the ongoing compliance management process that involves keeping up with changing state regulations that may or may not apply to each producer, depending on their license state and lines of authority. 

Great news! You don’t need to know how the sausage is made

Just like it’s way more enjoyable to dig into a juicy hotdog without thinking about what goes into making it, we suspect you’d rather get straight to the parts of working in insurance where you get to help people and earn a great living. 

With real-time, automated compliance using AgentSync, you can do exactly that. While you sit back, relax, and enjoy getting a full view of every agent’s license, appointment, and compliance status with a few clicks of a button, AgentSync works behind the scenes to ensure what you see is up-to-date and reflects current regulations. 

With AgentSync, compliance is baked in. No sausage making required! From whatever seat you sit in – whether an agency, carrier, MGA, MGU, BGA, or individual broker or producer, the process is simplified and compliance becomes automatic. 

For agencies: 

• Manage the entire producer lifecycle from onboarding, renewals, and terminations with just a few clicks and all within the same system. 
• Improve the producer experience so dramatically that you’ll earn a reputation as a partner they’re eager to team up with. 
• Save money by reducing the number of human-hours needed to get an agent ready to sell and track their compliance on an ongoing basis. 
• Eliminate the risk of noncompliance and hefty state fees that come along with compliance violations. 

For carriers: 

• Save money with Just-in-Time (JIT) appointments so you only pay for producers who sell for you. 
• Give agencies and agents self-service access to complete onboarding tasks within hours, not weeks or months, with a system that wont take an incomplete application. 
• Eliminate the risk of noncompliance and hefty state fees that come along with compliance violations. 

For producers: 

• Be in the driver’s seat with your onboarding and carrier appointments.
• No more sending or receiving “just checking in” emails to see the status of your licenses or appointments. 
• No more rounds of paper chasing and “just one more thing.” You upload everything you need to submit into one place, once. 
• Eliminate repeat data entry across different systems, and along with it, the chance of keying in mistakes. 
• Start selling faster, within days of joining a new agency or carrier partner.

Regardless of your role in the insurance distribution channel, AgentSync takes the sausage-making out of your life. We do the heavy lifting, enabled by modern software with real-time communication and synchronization, so you can take compliance off your plate and your mind. 

See how AgentSync can help you enjoy the result without the process

On this National Hot Dog Day, treat yourself to your hotdog, brat, or veggie sausage of choice. And, while you’re at it, connect with AgentSync to see how you can simplify the complex ordeal of insurance compliance management. 

After all, whether we’re talking about insurance or hot dogs, nobody really needs to see how the sausage is made.