The National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) is working to sunset the Company Specialized Report, or CSR, meaning forward-facing carriers that have relied on the report will need to adapt.
Companies that have used the CSR as a defacto step in their manual compliance processes are looking for new ways to fill this need. Time is of the essence since NIPR announced it’ll retire the program effective June 1, 2024. But it doesn’t have to be a forced change – this could be the opportunity you’ve been looking for to embrace modern challenges with modern solutions.
If you’re ready to buy the CSR a nice cake and a gold watch, then put on your party hat and let’s talk about what this retirement looks like for companies moving forward.
What is the NIPR CSR?
The CSR is a single point-in-time report from NIPR that allowed companies to pull only four pieces of information from a set list of data. This limitation meant companies that have been relying on the report have generally been using manual, spreadsheet-driven compliance processes. This limited point-in-time check of a producer force is incredibly risky, however.
For companies that still manage their producer suitability data on spreadsheets or paper, via manual data entry, the CSR is one piece of the “way we’ve always done things” suite of processes. While drawing data from the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) and the Regulatory Information Retrieval System (RIRS) is still a necessity, manual data reporting isn’t an effective use of time for you or your downstream insurance distribution partners.
Red-flagging violations, expired licenses, or other limited data that may have changed months ago poses the risk of a carrier or agency accidentally allowing an agent to sell or even advertise sales for months beyond the point of license lapse or revocation. Particularly since negligence claims against businesses rely on whether someone in the company knew or should have known about violations, taking a manual approach to licensing alerts exposes companies to a higher risk than what is necessary with modern compliance-as-a-service solutions.
By embracing the possibility of a speedier onboarding, less risky compliance, and more cost-effective appointment process, you could leverage your compliance data for your insurance business’s operational efficiency. The retirement of the CSR means looking to a future built on modern insurance infrastructure.
How to get started on replacing the CSR in your compliance workflow
Companies still using the CSR must change by mid-2024. For carriers and agencies that have relied on this limited data set to maintain compliance for their insurance producers, this moment is an opportunity to move forward and embrace better compliance practices. Some organizations will want to rethink their compliance infrastructure from the top down, embracing tech that can transform their entire approach. Others will use this opportunity to find solutions that integrate into their existing tech stack. The only wrong way to replace the CSR is to not replace the CSR.
When moving forward to replace the CSR in your current compliance process, you’ll want to know what you currently do and why, then visualize how you want your future state to look, then understand what it is that’ll get you there.
Acknowledge your current practices, asking yourself:
- Do you know what you use the NIPR Company Specialized Report for?
- What are the limitations?
- Why did you decide to use this CSR, verses something more protective and robust?
Visualize your future state, considering:
- What data would you ideally have?
- On what cadence would your data be updated?
- Where do you want this information to surface?
- Who needs access to your compliance data?
Understand your options for replacing the CSR for compliance:
- Continuing a manual process (not really compliant, per se)
- Enlisting a third-party service to handle this
- Implementing or building a compliance software solution
- Using application programming interfaces (APIs) to surface external data in your current software environment
Regardless of where you are in the process of replacing the CSR, there’s no time like today to clean up your data and prepare for a data migration.
How AgentSync can (better than) replace your CSR function
You have to replace the CSR. Not replacing it isn’t an option. It’s retiring!
Before NIPR gives the report its final slice of cake, you need a new option and, let’s face it, it’s time to move beyond a bubble-gum-and-duct-tape solution to your compliance woes. You still need NIPR and RIRS data to stay compliant, so this is your opportunity to take action and make your onboarding and compliance processes easier for producers, adjusters, and internal teams alike.
AgentSync can help carriers and agencies replace the CSR to better manage their insurance producer, broker, and adjuster compliance in multiple ways, but perhaps the clearest 1-to-1 replacement is our Producer Sync API:
1. AgentSync Producer Sync API
The Producer Sync API is a data doorway you can use to pull your producer and adjuster data into your existing systems, giving you the ability to maintain full compliance at all times, not just periodically or retroactively. With it, you get:
- Modern, flexible REST API that’s purpose-built to serve customers updated NIPR data
- Programmatic access to all the data points in a CSR + other NIPR data
- All the data points of the CSR surfaced in your systems, making your other systems and workflows more productive in turn
- Data synced daily to give you source-of-truth data validation
- Use-case-specific data-tailoring, made to:
- Maintain accurate license status
- Update system of record for renewals and expirations to ensure the most updated license and appointment data is available
- Confirm resident state license status
- Display your producer license or appointment data where you need it, when you need it, and to the people who need it
2. AgentSync Manage
If you’re looking at the retirement of the CSR as an opportunity to completely revamp your tech stack and use compliance data to drive intelligent business decisions, look no further than AgentSync Manage. Manage brings the data of the Producer Sync to life with data layers and functions that can automate many of your daily compliance tasks, including:
- Robust business data reporting, so you can use your own data to work smarter not harder
- License renewals, appointment, and appointment termination submissions so you can notify the states with a few clicks, no manual paperwork necessary
- Automated workflows to give your team less repetitive data entry
3. AgentSync Autopilot
If you’re ready to hand off the duties of compliance to someone else entirely, AgentSync Autopilot features:
- A team of compliance specialists who manage your license and appointment requirements on your behalf
- Access to basic visibility into your compliance “Scorecard” at any point in time to identify your pain points
- Reports on onboarding and other business data to help you make the best decisions for your organization
To learn more about how AgentSync can help you solve for producer, broker, or adjuster compliance in the post-CSR era, reach out to our team or request a demo.