CUSTOMERS >
Jimcor + AgentSync’s ProducerSync API
A forward-thinking MGA paved the way for others to integrate real-time, automated compliance directly into their existing management system.
Jimcor is an independent managing general agency (MGA) that’s been helping retail insurance agencies serve their clients’ unique needs for over 35 years. When an individual or business has risks that are hard to place, Jimcor provides access to more than 150 markets with specialized and tailored products.
Jimcor’s always been at the forefront of the technological revolution in the insurance industry, going as far as to commission its own agency management system starting in 2010. With its own web-based technology fully in place by 2014, the company began to look for other tech solutions to add in for greater efficiency across all of its operations.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a great way for Jimcor to plug accurate and up-to-date producer licensing information into its AMS. Instead, Jimcor resorted to multiple employees and “spreadsheets upon spreadsheets” to manually track each agent’s license status as best they could.
Everything changed when AgentSync introduced ProducerSync API. It was the solution Jimcor had been looking for, and leadership jumped on the chance to bring automation, speed, and cost savings to the producer license management process.
After going live with ProducerSync API, Jimcor has:
- Reduced the time it takes to oversee producer licensing from the equivalent of 1.5 full-time employees to just 30 minutes per day.
- Virtually eliminated any compliance risk associated with a producer selling outside of their license, unbeknownst to the agency.
- Transformed its producer license compliance process from one that could only spot-check license statuses at specific points in time to one with a transparent and always-up-to-date view of every producer’s status in every state.
“I tell other MGAs all the time that if you don’t have AgentSync, you need it. I’m a huge fan, and I honestly don’t know how any company operates without it. It’s going to save you money, eliminate your risk, and especially if you’re on the same system we’re on, it’s easy to implement because we did all the setup so the integration’s easy now.”
Jim Mastowski, President & Chief Information Officer, Jimcor Agencies
Leaders at the forefront of the InsurTech revolution
“We were really visionary back in 2010 when we started the process of creating our own agency management system. The biggest requirement was that it be online and cloud based so that over time we could integrate with other services via APIs and we wouldn’t be stuck with something obsolete in the future.”
Jim Mastowski, President & Chief Information Officer, Jimcor Agencies
Jimcor Agencies is an independent managing general agency (MGA) that was founded in 1986 by Frank and Ellen Mastowski. While its corporate headquarters is in New Jersey, Jimcor has the ability to write business for 20 different insurance carriers across 43 states. Along with that, the MGA has access to over 150 specialty markets, partners with around 1,500 retail agencies, and places business through around 4,400 individual insurance producers.
It’s hard to think about an MGA of that size operating on paper and with spreadsheets, rather than with high-tech solutions. Luckily for its clients, distribution partners, and employees, Jimcor prides itself on being forward-thinking, innovative, and tech-savvy – even in an industry that’s reluctant to quickly adopt change.
That’s why, back in 2010, Jimcor began pioneering a technology solution that would serve to replace a number of disparate systems it used to run its business. Jim Mastowski, Jimcor’s President & Chief Information Officer, said, “We realized that having different systems for everything from agency management to imaging to policy issuance, and more, just wasn’t the way to do things.”
Seeking a simpler, more streamlined, and automated solution, Mastowski sought out a technology vendor to partner with in creating Jimcor’s own full stack solution. His biggest requirement for the would-be solution was that it be cloud-based and able to integrate with data from other sources. “We just couldn’t keep expecting people to key data into different systems over and over again to do their jobs,” Mastowski explained. “I saw what the future was bringing, and that was web-based software that you could access from anywhere and that connected different sources of information into one place.”
The producer compliance gap
By 2014, Jimcor was up and running with its newly built agency management system (AMS). Not only was the project successful, but the software partner was able to resell the same technology to other MGAs so that Jimcor’s investment served the industry more broadly. And, unlike other insurance organizations that choose to build a solution in-house, Jimcor’s technology partner did the work of maintaining the system over time.
The new AMS worked well, and effectively replaced multiple legacy systems that Jimcor once used for managing most aspects of its business. Unfortunately, there was still a gap left unfilled by the technology: producer license compliance management. No such integration existed at the time (AgentSync wasn’t founded until 2018), and Mastowski understood the nearly impossible undertaking of trying to create a proprietary data feed that would connect his existing system to NIPR, the single source of insurance producer truth. Without a better option, the MGA was left to manage producer license compliance the way many in the industry did (and still do): with “spreadsheets upon spreadsheets.”
A manual process in a high-tech world
“Before ProducerSync API, we only had the ability to check an agent’s license status at a few specific points. People would assume that if someone’s license was good last week or last month, that it’s still good. If a producer’s license was suspended, we wouldn’t know that until we got to where we needed to look that specific person up again. Now, it’s updated daily and we know immediately if someone’s license has fallen out of good standing before we let them quote or bind a policy or add an endorsement.”
Jim Mastowski, President & Chief Information Officer, Jimcor Agencies
Despite its emphasis on technology and its proven track record of innovation, Jimcor was left with no good option for integrating producer license compliance into its modern agency management system. Instead, Mastowski said, “We hired people to look up licenses and all the other information on a producer’s status in each state, and there were spreadsheets upon spreadsheets to keep track of all that.”
While Mastowski explained the number of checks and balances in Jimcor’s process to catch errors and prevent producer compliance issues, he admits it was still an “impossible task for just about anybody.” To make it work, Jimcor had three to four people collectively doing the equivalent of one-and-a-half full-time employees, just to keep on top of licenses.
Also impossible was the idea of real-time, integrated, and automated compliance. Jimcor performed compliance checks on producers at several points in time, but didn’t have ongoing access to up-to-date information at any moment. Sometimes, this lag in updated data would cause an issue. For example, if a producer quoted a policy and then Jimcor’s compliance check before binding uncovered that producer’s license wasn’t active in the state they were trying to sell in. “At that point,” Mastowski said, “either the agent would have to take the time to get licensed or we’d have to find someone else to take over as the agent on that sale. It slowed down binding the policy and could lead to unhappy clients.”
The arrival of ProducerSync API
“We didn’t want or need a big robust solution just for this one thing. We wanted a way for license compliance to work in tandem with our system that we’ve had for 10 years, that already works really well for us.”
Jim Mastowski, President & Chief Information Officer, Jimcor Agencies
When Mastowski discovered AgentSync’s ProducerSync API, it seemed like a match made in heaven. He wasn’t looking to overhaul or replace the system that had been working for 10 years; he just wanted to plug in always up-to-date producer license information to simplify and reduce risk in the MGA’s processes.
The result was time savings, cost savings, risk reduction, happier employees, and compliance checks baked into each vital step of Jimcor’s sales process. Instead of referencing an internal spreadsheet with potentially outdated producer license information, Mastowski said, “What we have now is built-in license checks at several points. When an agent submits for a quote, the system will tell them right away that they’re not licensed and ask if they want to continue. That warning will be there every time they touch the account, and then we put a hard stop at bind so no one is able to bind if the system says they’re not licensed.”
Having accurate-to-the-day producer license information built into everything Jimcor’s agents do means no one can accidentally make a sale without the right license in place. Jimcor also no longer needs multiple employees to manage licensing, or even to collect paper copies of each agent’s license when they onboard. Instead, one person can spend half an hour each day to gather producers’ NPNs and let the technology do the rest.
Empowering other MGAs to master their compliance
“At this point there are upwards of 50 MGAs using the agency management system that we had a tech vendor build for us 10 years ago. Since we went through the effort of configuring the AMS to work with ProducerSync API, any of those MGAs could easily get up and running with integrating compliance data into their own systems.”
Jim Mastowski, President & Chief Information Officer, Jimcor Agencies
Ten years ago, Mastowski and Jimcor pioneered a modern AMS to serve the needs of MGAs into the future. Today, it’s taken the technology a step further by integrating AgentSync’s ProducerSync API. Now, more than 50 other MGAs stand to reap the benefits of Jimcor’s investment into configuring ProducerSync API to work with its AMS. And Mastowski doesn’t hesitate to let other MGAs know about it!
“At some point, you’re going to have no choice but to get on AgentSync,” Mastowski says to his MGA industry peers. “The states are looking for ways to generate revenue and looking for problems with producer licensing is an easy way for them to impose a fine; why wouldn’t they do it?”
Plus, with the legwork Jimcor’s already done, Mastowski estimates that other MGAs on the same system could get up and running with ProducerSync API in a matter of days. “Maybe a month, at most,” Mastowski adds, “because that’s just how things work in IT. But definitely very quickly.”
How AgentSync’s ProducerSync API helped Jimcor
- Reduced the amount of time employees spend on producer license management from around 60 hours a week to less than three.
- Eliminated compliance risk based on outdated producer license information at all points in the quoting, binding, and endorsement stages of a sale.
- Enabled Jimcor’s existing, and highly functional agency management system to incorporate real-time producer license information.
- Furthers Jimcor’s reputation as an innovative technology leader among MGAs and the insurance industry as a whole.
“AgentSync and ProducerSyncAPI are the type of things that I honestly don’t understand how a company operates without it.”
Add real-time, integrated, automated producer compliance into your existing technology.
Learn more about how AgentSync’s ProducerSync API can reduce risk, save money, and add efficiency to your compliance management process.