The field of insurance has been around for hundreds of years. But, until recently, not much had changed in the way business was conducted. As with other historic industries like legal services, real estate, and financial services, insurance industry processes have been resistant to change. Until now.
Finally, the insurance industry is facing a technological reckoning. Insurance carriers and agencies alike are realizing the necessity of using modern technology, namely the automation of manual processes, to meet the challenges today’s complex world presents. While necessary, this technological shift isn’t always easy. In fact, it’s quite disruptive.
Just mentioning automation can cause feelings of excitement (this will free up my time to do more important work), confusion (do I need to be tech savvy?), or even concern (will this eliminate my role?).
Far from replacing insurance expertise, using technology to automate insurance processes is truly about pairing digital tools with human brain-power to fuel innovation.
This is done by:
- Improving processes
- Providing real-time access to data
- Integrating directly with existing technology
By leveraging automation to eliminate manual processes, insurance company operations teams can redirect resources and talent to more complicated, high-value endeavours. Instead of spending hours filling in forms, agents can focus on growing their customer base. Operations experts can spend more time streamlining their business processes and focusing on agent retention. Most importantly, all stakeholders reduce their compliance risks.
Reducing the pain point of insurance producer licensing
Of all the manual processes that eat away at insurance companies’ productivity (and revenues), producer licensing is at the top of the list. When we talk to insurance experts, we find many are tracking processes and data manually.
This includes using multiple websites and state portals to complete the same task in multiple states for each producer.
A typical producer requires tracking for:
- continuing education requirements and courses
- affiliations
- carrier appointments
- licenses for each line of authority
- address information
- employment history
- background information
- transactions for licensing and carrier appointments for each state
- and more
Obviously, managing vital components of producer licensing compliance by hand is cumbersome. All the more so, when a company aims to grow and onboard new producers by the day. The enormity of this task – which requires hundreds, if not thousands of manual hours – leads many companies to avoid it until they are faced with impending compliance audits.
Even when a company attempts to keep on top of this manual work, delays, human error, and added expense are commonplace.
Smart compliance melds automation and expertise
At its best, automation reduces manual data entry and frees up staff to focus their expertise on more valuable areas. Producer license compliance is one area of the business where leveraging automated technology is particularly impactful.
We hear from insurance industry experts that there are five key areas where automation would drastically improve processes and ease of compliance:
- Real-time data sync with NIPR:
- Get state licensing, carrier appointment, regulatory action, and more from NIPR at your fingertips.
- Easily view items that require your attention with alerts, reports, and dashboards.
- Automate license requirements:
- Receive alerts for upcoming renewals and all requirements needed to complete them for each producer.
- Keep track of continuing education requirements prior to each renewal.
- Get notified of state-specific requirements and eliminate repetitive state entries.
- Daily alerts from NIPR:
- Receive notification as soon as an agent is approved for a new line of business by a state.
- Updates on new rulings from state departments of insurance as they happen.
- Integration with other solutions:
- Achieve a 360-degree view of each producer’s status.
- Seamlessly integrate with other tech tools for contracting, file-sharing, background checks, continuing education.
- Eliminate rekeying of producer information by using direct feeds from other sources.
- Consolidate data access points:
- A single, secure location for all producer data.
- Reduce your exposure to security threats.
- Simplify your records in case of a compliance audit
With the right tools, growth doesn’t have to come at the expense of compliance, nor does compliance have to handcuff your growth potential. By implementing technology that handles the manual processes your staff grapple with today, you can put your team’s expertise to better use.
If you’re ready to see how producer license compliance automation could take your organization’s productivity to the next level, watch a demo of AgentSync in action.
