Niche Life Insurance Carrier + AgentSync Manage

This niche life insurance carrier began partnering with AgentSync in 2021 to modernize the way it managed producer license verification and appointments during its agent contracting and underwriting processes. By leveraging AgentSync’s Manage solution, the carrier has achieved significant cost savings, improved efficiency, and removed cumbersome steps from its underwriting process.

After going live with AgentSync, this life insurance customer has: 

• Saved $25,000 annually by removing around 4,000 inactive and unproductive agents from its appointment renewals   
• Shaved time off the underwriting process by automating the producer license verification step of every insurance application 
• Laid the foundation for even greater digital processes and software integrations in the future

“AgentSync makes producer compliance streamlined and automatic because if a producer doesn’t have an active license prior to the signature date on the policy application, it’s an automatic decline. We don’t have to worry about someone selling a policy without a valid license or taking the time to manually check every application that comes in.”  

Head of Agent Contracting

Outdated systems + manual processes = paying for things you shouldn’t

When the Head of Agent Contracting joined this niche life insurance carrier more than five years ago, she found a company still relying on decades-old technology. Unlike the larger insurance carriers she had worked at before, this “nano-carrier” had been operating on a old-school mainframe computers for nearly 50 years. It was only around 2019 that the organization made the decision to overhaul its technology systems, and the new Head of Agent Contracting joined soon after the initiative began. 

“At that time, we invested in an underwriting management system and a policy management system, but we never got set up with an agency management system,” the Head of Agent Contract explained. “We didn’t have anything to manage producer compliance, so we were still very much doing that by hand. When I started here, we didn’t have the ability to do Just-in-Time appointments, so that’s when I started looking for a solution.”

On top of the costs, risks, and hassles that come with legacy software, she also learned that the insurance carrier was spending far more money than it needed to be on things like agent appointment fees. With no real insight into which agents were selling policies, the company was appointing and renewing appointments for around 11,000 agents each year. This was an expense the company thought was just part of the cost of doing business, but would soon learn it didn’t have to be. 

Build or buy? Shopping for a compliance solution

Coming from larger insurance carriers, the Head of Agent Contracting was accustomed to companies with a long history of building their own tech solutions in-house. Unlike many in-house build horror stories however, her experience was with companies that had successfully built usable, modern technology to power their insurance businesses. 

But at this life insurance carrier, the new Head of Agent Contracting didn’t have a large IT team at her disposal. She knew, as someone who had experience with the complexity of in-house builds, that she needed to look elsewhere. “We don’t have a thousand programmers on staff at our beck and call to be able to build something ourselves, so that’s where you start to look for an alternative like AgentSync to do it for you,” she explained.

In her search, the Head of Agent contracting said, someone on the carrier’s leadership team came across AgentSync. And as she took a deeper look, the solution rose above the competition. “One thing that stood out to me right away about AgentSync was that it had a much more modern look and feel than any other system I was familiar with,” she recalled. The platform’s Salesforce backbone was another significant advantage, offering scalability and integration capabilities that aligned with our modernization goals.

Speaking to the advantages of choosing a technology partner rather than building something in-house, this agent contracting leader said, “There’s a little bit of startup cost involved but we’ve seen it really pay off with our ability to do things like a large API project where we connected AgentSync to our underwriting system and it didn’t cost us anything extra to do that.” In terms of praise for the AgentSync team itself, she continued, “Some tech vendors charge you so much for everything, it’s five grand just to get them on the phone to do an investigation to see if it’s a feasible project! We didn’t have that experience with AgentSync. The team has been incredibly helpful and willing to partner with us to make sure the solution is working to meet our needs.” 

“In my opinion, for a B2B setting, Salesforce is a far superior platform than others. I actually had a conversation with our sales team and they agreed that a Salesforce-based CRM would be the best for them, so they’re in the process of developing that now and we’ll be able to integrate a lot of what the sales department is trying to do with what the contracting department is trying to do. It ends up being a big win not only for us and for sales but for underwriting too because they get the product to market quicker.” 

Head of Agent Contracting

From rookie mistakes to real results 

Implementing AgentSync at this life insurance carrier wasn’t without its own learning curve. As the Head of Agent Contracting candidly admitted, “In a classic rookie mistake, we loaded up every agent’s NPN into AgentSync regardless of whether they were a productive agent or not. This meant we were paying to manage agents who weren’t bringing in any revenue.”

However, this initial misstep led to a valuable opportunity for the carrier to reassess its producer base. “Through the process of cleaning house, we went from managing 11,000 agents to only the 7,000 who are actually producing for us,” she explained. This cleanup not only streamlined the company’s operations but also resulted in significant cost savings. She calculated that the company reduced its annual spend on producer appointments by $25,000 after eliminating agents who weren’t selling their products, rather than renewing appointments on every agent they’d ever worked with. 

While dramatic, cost savings wasn’t the only benefit this life carrier found using AgentSync. The contracting leader reported the company also achieved: 

Streamlined underwriting: AgentSync makes underwriting quicker and easier, allowing underwriters to focus on the important parts of their jobs instead of manual license verification. 

“We no longer have to manually update agent data. When a policy application comes into our underwriting department, it sends a validation request directly to AgentSync and AgentSync can tell you right away in real-time whether or not the agent has a license. The underwriter can continue with the underwriting process, or if there’s an issue, then my department can step in and correct that issue as soon as possible. This has eliminated a whole step of what our underwriting team used to do and now they can focus on underwriting.”

Head of Agent Contracting

Enhanced compliance: AgentSync has enabled more rigorous and automated compliance checks, which means the contracting and licensing team never have to worry about a policy being written or a commission being paid to an agent without a valid license. 

“AgentSync makes producer compliance streamlined and automatic because if a producer doesn’t have an active license prior to the signature date on the policy application, it’s an automatic decline. We don’t have to worry about someone selling a policy without a valid license or taking the time to manually check every application that comes in.” 

Head of Agent Contracting 

Frequent, automatic license verification: AgentSync saves time by performing producer license verification automatically each time a new application comes in. 

“We verify that an agent has an active license each time they submit a policy application. So, if an agent is trying to sell a new policy weekly, we’re looking at their license status on a weekly basis. Without AgentSync that’d be an incredibly time-consuming process to have to look up manually.”

Head of Agent Contracting

These benefits combined make everything from the agent appointment process to policy applications and underwriting much faster and smoother. 

Thinking toward the future

This life insurance carrier’s journey with AgentSync is far from over. The company is looking forward to further integrations, particularly with its sales team’s new CRM, which will also be Salesforce-based. While this contracting leader and others have seen numerous benefits already, further systems integration and alignment promises to create even greater efficiencies across departments.

“Others around the company have seen a dramatic improvement in the speed at which we can get people contracted. However, the maximum impact won’t be felt until further down the road once we have AgentSync and other tech systems fully integrated and moving at the same speed through all parts of the process.” 

Head of Agent Contracting

The agent contracting leader’s vision for the future is clear: “My goal over the next five years is that no one even needs to call up my department. We shouldn’t be a team of button pushers. We’re here to complement what the systems are doing and to make sure the systems are operating correctly, but we shouldn’t be answering calls and emails to do what a system like AgentSync can do for us.”

How AgentSync helps this life insurance carrier customer

• Sets the stage for the carrier to advance its technological transformation through further integrations
• Saves $25,000 each year in unnecessary agent appointment fees
• Allows the company to manage 7,000 active agents with the equivalent of 2.5 full time employees
• Dramatically eases the underwriting process by connecting AgentSync’s automatic license verification with their underwriting system