Democratizing Data in Insurance

In the insurance industry, it’s pretty tough to come by important data, such as broker licensure details for compliance – including status, renewal dates, and continuing education requirements. While navigating fragmented legacy systems to gather this data isn’t easy, data usage is essential. 

Cue data democratization; the process of opening up access to and usability of data. This means consolidating siloed data into a single source of truth and enabling people to work comfortably with data while making critical business decisions. 

Data usage in insurance

Many insurance companies operate in a world where they get data so infrequently that any given process is static – it answers a problem with information from a single point in time. And that’s fine for some roles, but it doesn’t give companies the ability to act more dynamically on the realities of their businesses. 

Data democratization goes beyond helping to address the business challenges of today, by helping companies observe things about their business that they historically couldn’t. Armed with that information, companies can make educated decisions about how they want to change the way they operate and in turn, get smarter about their processes. 

With our Manage product, customers can view up-to-date information about producer licensing status. Tracking this data brings to light any spikes or dips across producer onboarding and license renewals. As a result, companies can begin to build support or mitigation plans based on producer licensing trends within their own company. 

It all comes down to the data. 

Getting the most up-to-date information with AgentSync

Seeing data is one thing, but it’s also important to make sure teams can act on data – and act on it in real-time as they go through a workflow. 

No more logging in to multiple websites, no more re-keying contact information. By integrating directly with NIPR, we’ve streamlined the insurance compliance process to provide up-to-the-minute data on compliance credentials. 

We present data at the point in time companies need it so that they can direct their businesses in new ways.  For insurance companies, accessing quality, up-to-the-minute data has the potential to completely change agent management and onboarding. 

Consider this: Before paying insurance commissions, MGAs and carriers need to verify that agents are properly licensed. By inputting a unique identifier – national producer number, license ID, or Social Security number – AgentSync connects directly with NIPR to compile all of the licenses and appointments for that agent. Suddenly, verifying licensure becomes very easy. You can ensure that an agent has the necessary license in real-time before paying a commission on a policy.

It seems intuitive, doesn’t it? 

We’ve put a lot of work into making a system that unfurls industry data in a very user-friendly manner. After all, a world of data doesn’t mean much if it isn’t usable.

Humanizing data  

We’ve added layers to make insurance data more consumable. 

For instance, most people don’t think about a line of authority as a number, they think about what the line of authority represents – life, health, property, casualty, etc. So, instead of presenting a line of authority to customers as a number, we translate it into the way that people typically think about it. 

It’s all about closing the gap between the way data is historically presented and the way people actually think about data. That way, people can access the data even if they don’t think about it from a technical lens. 

Strategic businesses: using data to plan for the future

Data helps people think more strategically about the way they do things and how they want to be doing things in the future. 

We’ve found that once our customers get access to data, they derive compelling insights into their business processes and ask us very interesting questions about what comes next. As we work with customers to streamline workflows, we identify new use cases for our products. 

When we first built AgentSync, we thought that carriers and MGAs would want to pull the data to verify licenses when paying commissions. While that is a use case for the product, as it turns out, underwriting systems are also looking to bake AgentSync into their submission processes. It’s a use case that we hadn’t identified, but are thrilled to support. 

We build our product roadmap with our customers in mind. Often, when we give customers the tools they need to perform their jobs more efficiently and effectively, they’ll come back with an idea for a new tool or feature that can add value for them, and our product continues to iterate.

Innovation in the insurance industry

Democratizing data has the potential to drive the next wave of innovation in the insurance industry. And the industry is ripe for innovation.

The way that insurance is sold and distributed today isn’t much different from 50 years ago. Now, instead of buying insurance at a brick-and-mortar storefront, you’re going to a website, but the backend processes are essentially the same. That means there’s tons of opportunity to modernize processes that have been an obligation in the insurance industry for decades.

That’s why we’ve made it our mission to make insurance industry data more accessible and to make existing processes more proficient, efficient, and effective with a beautiful, user-friendly frontend to support it.

What’s clear across the insurance industry is that the need for data is there. Organizations want to use data to make informed, strategic decisions. Check out our demo to learn more about how AgentSync can help your organization access and use up-to-date insurance industry data.