Specialty MGA + AgentSync Manage

Executive summary

This MGA takes on back-office tasks for other specialty insurance companies within its product portfolio, ranging from legal, to IT, HR, and compliance. Although the company isn’t tasked with obtaining producer licenses and carrier appointments for the agencies and brokers it works with, the organization still needs to verify licenses are valid and in good standing when anyone conducts business. This includes being able to easily produce documents like W-9s, E&O insurance policies, contracts, and insurance licenses for its own legal team, insurance carriers, and regulators—if asked. Unfortunately, trying to do this using a shared drive and spreadsheets was a losing proposition.

When the Head of Insurance Distribution joined the company several years ago, he was excited to learn the organization had already invested in AgentSync’s Manage solution. Unfortunately, no one was utilizing the platform as intended, which meant compliance was still manual and tedious. The Head of Insurance Distribution reached out to his AgentSync customer success team and was quickly on his way to revolutionizing the way this MGA dealt with compliance.

After going live with AgentSync, this customer has: 

• Reduced by 75 percent the amount of time it would take to manage compliance with shared drives and spreadsheets
• Gained the ability to immediately access and report on the types of documentation the business is required to keep on all brokers
• Automated reports and alerts that keep staff informed of upcoming compliance needs without having to check constantly
• Proactively addressed operational issues the organization discovered in other areas while getting its compliance house in order

“I would recommend AgentSync to anyone based on our experience because it’s been really great. It’s better than competitors because the project management team is great, the customer support is great, and it’s based on Salesforce, which is a stable platform.” 

Head of Insurance Distribution

A young company using old methods 

This organization is a unique business positioned to serve many of the back-office needs of the specialty insurance companies that are part of its product portfolio. These functions range from accounting to technology, from legal to human resources, and, not insignificantly, compliance. While agency and individual producer license compliance isn’t the company’s bread and butter, verifying its downstream distribution channel partners’ licenses is a critical part of the work it performs. Other compliance tasks include collecting an insurance brokers’ IRS form W-9, proof of errors and omissions policy, and contracts, among other documentation.

Simply put: The organization is required to collect a lot of information and documentation about brokers, and needs to be able to show proof of that information and its validity to its legal team, insurance carriers, and others – on demand.

Despite being established in recent years, the business wasn’t always at the forefront of using cutting-edge technology. According to the Head of Insurance Distribution, the early days consisted of trying to check off the boxes of each type of technology product the company needed: policy management system, underwriting system, HR system, and so on. The focus was less on fully understanding and using the products, but rather about making sure the organization was set up with each basic need before moving on to the next. 

This was a good start but, as the Head of Insurance Distribution would find out when he joined the company several years ago, the organization’s employees continued to struggle with manual processes they should have long-since moved beyond, thanks to multiple tech systems that weren’t fully baked.

“If we didn’t have AgentSync, we’d be digging through One Drive file folders, struggling with having the right permissions to view things. It would be Excel spreadsheets and we wouldn’t have a report or a summary to get quick answers to questions like who’s E&O is renewing and when. There would just be so much manual work involved.” 

Head of Insurance Distribution

A new sheriff in town

When the Head of Insurance Distribution joined this MGA several years ago, he walked into a new role at a relatively new company but he was no stranger to the industry. He brought his 20-plus years of experience as a retail insurance agent to the table as he was looking for a new challenge in the world of wholesale insurance. Even though he stepped into a role that included some messy and manual compliance practices, this distribution channel management leader soon learned the company had already purchased a solution: AgentSync. 

“We had AgentSync but we weren’t using it. Instead, people were just filing contracts away helter skelter in a Microsoft folder somewhere. When I came in I nearly had a panic attack when I saw the state of our broker contracts.” 

Head of Insurance Distribution

Even though it wasn’t yet being leveraged to its full potential, he was excited to see what AgentSync could do for the the organization.

“I was taking over for someone from the early days who’d worn a lot of different hats,” the insurance distribution leader said. “They’d seen the potential in AgentSync and they’d purchased it, but then they had to move onto the next thing. So, when I joined, my manager at the time showed me AgentSync and I thought it looked interesting but there was so much more we needed to do than what we were using it for at the time.” 

Seeing AgentSync’s potential to solve a problem for the MGA, and knowing that he wanted to be able to hand off the compliance admin duties to others in the future, the Head of Insurance Distribution decided to engage with his customer success team at AgentSync and see what the solution could really do.

The beauty of partnership

The Head of Insurance Distribution was determined to get the full value out of the product his predecessor had purchased, and this started by connecting with his AgentSync customer success manager. From the first time he reached out, he could tell this would be a different kind of relationship than those he’d had with tech vendors in the past. 

“With other software vendors I’ve worked with, if I had a question they would say ‘Hang on, let me Google the answer for you,’” he said. “I prefer someone who knows the answer and not us paying to train them to do their job. That’s the kind of expertise we get with AgentSync.” 

Over the course of the next few months, the Head of Insurance Distribution worked closely and on a regular basis with the AgentSync team to get his company’s system configured exactly how they wanted it. Surprisingly, the more they did with AgentSync, the more opportunities they saw to use it. 

“We didn’t realize how much we needed AgentSync or how beneficial it would be until we began to grow and saw what we really needed to have in place in terms of structure, process, and procedures. As time went on, we discovered just how much we needed it, along with building a valued relationship with the AgentSync team thanks to their expertise.”

Head of Insurance Distribution

Eventually, the hard work paid off and the MGA’s insurance distribution team was reaping the benefits of AgentSync’s Manage solution by drastically reducing both the time spent and risk incurred on broker compliance. 

Far-reaching impacts 

The benefits didn’t start and end solely with compliance. As he dug further into AgentSync’s capabilities, the insurance distribution leader’s tasks included sorting through, and sorting out, many different (often conflicting) business relationships between his company and brokers, wholesalers, carriers, and other entities. In doing so, he often found red flags and risks that no one had been aware of. Spotting them during this process allowed the company to proactively address them before they became issues in another way. This became particularly important as the company has continued to grow through mergers and acquisitions. 

Setting up AgentSync, he said, informed how the company wanted to manage other aspects of its data and digital operations. It opened up his and others’ eyes to issues that no one had thought of and led to important conversations that uncovered potential landmines before they became real problems. 

“As we implemented AgentSync, we found things that needed to be sorted out – and not just on the AgentSync side. We were able to fix things on the policy side and on the accounting side because they’d surfaced while we were getting AgentSync up, and finding them like that reduced risk for us across the board.” 

Head of Insurance Distribution

How AgentSync helps this this specialty MGA

• Provides quick and easy access to documentation the company is required to keep on its brokers, with the ability to instantly produce these documents for legal and regulatory compliance purposes 
• Automates reports and alerts, which relieves compliance admins from tracking everything manually 
• Saves an estimated 75 percent of time that would be spent managing broker compliance with shared drives and spreadsheets
• Allowed the MGA to uncover operational issues and risks they were not previously aware of and to address those risks proactively
• Acts as an expert compliance partner who can advise on best practices and help guide the company toward even greater ROI