It’s Demolition Time: Tear Down the Information and Workflow Silos in Your Insurance Business

Data and workflow silos are costing your insurance business time, money, and talent. For insurance carriers and agencies, these inefficiencies can increase compliance risk and limit operational scalability. So it’s important to be able to name the silos in your business—and identify solutions to break them down—to help keep your insurance business healthy and thriving.  

Does the phrase “but this is how we’ve always done it” sound familiar? If it does, you’re most definitely not alone. A lot of things in the insurance business have been “done this way” for decades, if not centuries. 

Sticking with the same old way you’ve always managed your business may seem like the easiest route, but when it comes to making your business competitive, the status quo just won’t do. The truth is, insurance carriers, insurance agencies, and MGAs/MGUs are filled to the brim with silos. Whether they’re due to outdated processes, outdated tech, or people who don’t have the resources they need to share information effectively both inside and outside their organization, silos are all too common in today’s insurance world. 

Outdated systems and disconnected workflows create silos that hinder insurance compliance management, reduce data visibility, and slow producer onboarding and licensing processes. To stay competitive, insurance carriers and agencies need to prioritize digital solutions with the right technology to address the silos slowing down their business. 

Maybe you realize these silos exist and have been trying to find solutions, but to no avail. On the other hand, maybe you’ve been blissfully unaware and didn’t even know your status quo was causing problems. In either case, keep reading to learn about the common silos that hold many insurance businesses back from achieving their full potential. 

What silos make your insurance compliance an organizational barrier?

Photo by David Ireland on Unsplash

Like the glorious grain silos beautifully dotting the American agricultural landscape, silos in your business are great ways of keeping information and processes locked away and free of contaminants. Unfortunately, this also means the people who need to access that information or processes most likely can’t. Unlike grains and other commodities, institutional knowledge needs the ability to move freely around your organization. Thus, as much as we love farmers, we firmly believe silos have no business in your business.  

Silos in your business model can negatively impact the free flow of data critical to insurance operations, regulatory compliance, and producer lifecycle management. Without centralized access to accurate data, organizations risk compliance violations, inconsistent decision-making, and inefficiencies across teams. 

Information silos 

Information silos occur in your business when information travels vertically but not horizontally. This can lead to breakdowns in the distribution of accurate compliance information, which increases regulatory risk for insurance carriers and agencies. For example, the head of your legal department communicates an update to the compliance team members beneath them in the org chart, who then communicate the information to the administrative employees under them. But no one mentions anything to the head of operations, so the information never makes it to the staff in that department. This can lead to confusion and conflict between departments as each  works with the information they have, but not the same (accurate) information. Automating your business’s compliance management with centralized insurance compliance software can go a long way to eliminating inaccurate and outdated information, and thereby reducing regulatory risk. 

Workflow silos 

In addition to information silos, there are workflow silos. This happens when different parts of a larger organization follow different processes and workflows. If every department is a gear in a large machine but each gear is turning in its own unique direction, the machine as a whole won’t function. 

More specifically, workflow silos create misalignment across departments, making it difficult to maintain consistent compliance processes and standardized insurance operations. This directly impacts efficiency, audit readiness, and compliance tracking.

Internal silos 

The information and workflow silos that are built between departments within an organization are what we commonly think of. It’s easy to imagine how the sales team and HR department may have entirely different ways of doing things and places to look for information. Most of us have worked in a company that suffered from internal silos at least a little bit. Internal silos can create confusion and inaccurate records between departments responsible for producer compliance, licensing, and carrier appointments, leading to delays and increased insurance regulatory risk.

External silos

Perhaps just as common, but less frequently acknowledged, are the information and workflow silos that exist between different organizations that need to work in lockstep with one another. In the insurance industry, an insurance carrier, an insurance agency, and regulatory bodies benefit from having a transparent, real-time, multi-directional flow of information. If they do, everyone within each organization is able to access the same knowledge as the others and everyone is on the same page, effortlessly. We probably don’t have to tell you this isn’t usually the case. Without real-time, shared data, organizations struggle to keep accurate and updated records in regards to things like producer licenses and appointment compliance. Agent Sync was designed to take this silo down and automate this crucial part of the insurance compliance process through its proprietary software. 

What causes business silos? 

A lot’s been written about the causes and negative impacts silos have on businesses. From revenue, to efficiency, to employee morale, the consensus is that nothing good comes from a siloed organization. 

In many cases, experts attribute the formation of silos to bad leadership and antagonistically competitive internal teams. We also know, however, that silos can exist not from malicious intent but simply from a lack of resources spent on preventing them. In an industry as old as insurance, silos often stem from outdated systems and lack of investment in modern insurance compliance technology, which can address challenges with things like data integration, workflow automation, and compliance management.

How can you tear down information and workflow silos in your insurance business? 

That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Breaking down the data, workflow, and communication silos in your insurance business may feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. A few expert tips include: 

• Encouraging horizontal collaboration: Create opportunities for members of teams to work with each other, not just with those in their vertical chain of command. 
• Create a common goal: When every person on the team shares a vision and is dedicated toward working together to achieve it, it becomes less important to hoard information and more important to share it. 
• Implement insurance technology to do the heavy lifting: More systems isn’t always the answer. But having the right systems in place can be. When your organization invests in a solution that gives each employee the appropriate level of insight to the same single source of truth, it’s hard for information silos to thrive. 

Of course, this is all easier said than done. But demolishing your information silos doesn’t have to be an impossible task. With the right tools, it can be easier than you think! 

If you’re looking for a better way to break down the silos in your insurance business and better manage insurance producer onboarding, ongoing compliance management, contracting, carrier appointments, and many other pieces of your business—in a way that provides transparency across the organization and makes your internal and external stakeholders happy—see how AgentSync can help, or better yet- schedule your demo today.