Can My Agents be Ready to Sell in Two Days? (And Other Producer Onboarding Questions You Should Be Asking)

Having a producer onboarded and ready to hit the ground running, ready to sell business in just two days is a pretty lofty goal for an insurance carrier. That’s why it’s one of Security Health Plan of Wisconsin’s proudest achievements after they completely overhauled their producer onboarding process. 

“When we started looking for a solution, our goal was to get the agent onboarding process down from two-and-a-half or three months to a couple of weeks. That would have been ideal. After implementing AgentSync, we saw brokers being turned around in two days.” 

– Kara Johnson, Director of Strategic Growth Initiatives, Security Health Plan of Wisconsin 

Legacy insurance carrier problems

Security Health Plan of Wisconsin has been around for more than 50 years. Like most insurance carriers in that position, its processes both evolved organically over time and tended not to keep up with the technological capabilities of the day. 

As the years went on, bringing on new agents to sell its health plans went from something simple that one employee easily managed in-house to something so complex that even four full-time employees struggled to keep up.

The biggest issue Security Health Plan of Wisconsin faced was how long it took to get an agent appointed to legally and compliantly sell its products. From the time they learned a new producer had a client ready and waiting to make a purchase, it’s no exaggeration to say this process could take months. 

The first step involved the insurance company’s compliance team sending the would-be-agent paperwork to complete. And everything else that followed was just as manual. Between waiting on responses, checking them for completeness and accuracy, requesting more information, waiting for responses (again!), and repeating this whole cycle over and over, Security Health Plan of Wisconsin was spending around three months with producers wanting, but unable to, sell policies.  

A modern insurance solution

It should go without saying that this situation wasn’t sustainable for Security Health Plan of Wisconsin if they wanted to continue to sell policies and grow efficiently – which they very much did! The compliance team and the rest of the company realized they needed a solution that wouldn’t keep leaving business on the table. 

They needed a modern, streamlined, user-friendly way to get new agents into their system, verify their license status, complete their state appointments, and let the producer start selling.  

Spoiler alert: They found all this and more with AgentSync’s Manage solution. 

 “Right now we’re actively managing our largest book of brokers ever. This is the largest distribution channel we’ve ever had, and we’ve been able to onboard whole agencies within weeks.” 

Can your insurance company do that? 

As promised, here’s a list of questions you should be asking if you’re involved in any part of producer management at an insurance carrier:

• How long does it take your company to get a brand new agent ready to sell? 
• How many full-time employees (or outsourced temps/contractors) are spending their time trying to make this happen?
• What could some or all of these employees be focusing on if they weren’t needed for unnecessary manual tasks? 
• How does your company stack up against competitors who’re all vying to do business with the same producer pool? 
• Does your company have a tech-forward and user-friendly way to collect producers’ information? And does it sync daily with the industry’s single source of truth?

Depending on your answers, you may be making the same mistakes Security Health Plan of Wisconsin used to be: leaving business on the table due to slow processes; risking employee churn because no one loves a manual, tedious job; losing producers partway through the onboarding process because it’s so slow and painful for them. 

If any of this sounds familiar, the good news is that the solution is simpler and more cost-effective than you think. Want more proof? Read Security Health Plan of Wisconsin’s full success story here.  

Ready to learn how AgentSync can turn your insurance carrier’s producer onboarding and compliance woes into your very own success story? Get in touch with us today!