Service Insurance Companies + AgentSync Manage

Service Insurance Companies has been a leader in workers compensation insurance for over 40 years. The company originally focused  on workers comp in the state of Texas, and later expanded nationwide. In doing so, managing producer appointments went from a mildly cumbersome manual task to a literal nightmare.

It was around this time that Jay Howard, the current Director of Compliance and Risk Management for Service Insurance Companies, was tasked with creating a new compliance department that hadn’t existed before. As a two-person compliance team trying to keep up with producer appointments across 50 states, Jay knew the job simply wasn’t possible without some sort of tech solution in place. 

After going live with AgentSync in 2021, Service Insurance Companies has:

• Grown its distribution channel partnership by adding new producers – without putting unreasonable demands on its compliance team
• Eliminated manual processes that kept the compliance team from focusing on big-picture challenges and projects
• Lowered the risk of market conduct violations to virtually zero

Service Insurance Companies hasn’t only achieved unprecedented levels of efficiency, compliance, and peace of mind but, through partnering with AgentSync, has dramatically improved the employee experience for those tasked with managing agent appointments and compliance on a daily basis. 

Paper forms, paper checks, and postal mail: A recipe for headaches

“In the not-too-distant past, when we were a single-state business just focused on Texas, we were literally filling out the TDI’s forms with Scantron and sending it in with a $10 check. That was a nightmare!”

Jay Howard, Director of Compliance and Risk Management, Service Insurance Companies

As the head of a newly created compliance department, Jay Howard knew his current methods weren’t sustainable. Appointing producers in just one state (Texas) was enough to take up Howard’s weekends because he had to fill out forms by hand, on paper, and mail them to the Texas Department of Insurance with a check for each producer.

When the company decided to expand its workers compensation insurance coverage into all 50 states, and at the same time create a unified compliance department to remove silos, Howard knew how much work would be involved to appoint producers across multiple states. And it wasn’t just the initial appointment, Howard said, “It was the ongoing tracking of when we appointed someone and being able to tie everything together with a process and the recordkeeping,” that was the real challenge.

“We decided it was too big of an ask, especially of our two-person compliance team at the time, to manually manage appointments and licensing, and keeping track of 50 state regulations on these things. We knew there was just no way we were ever going to catch up, compliance-wise, without some sort of solution.”

A misshaped solution

Prior to finding AgentSync, Howard’s team tried making do with something the company already had: an IT ticketing system. They quickly learned the downsides of trying to use the wrong tool for the job.

“We had a ticketing system that we leveraged from IT for a little while to help us wrangle requests for new producer appointments,” Howard said, “But it wasn’t built for that. It was frustrating and inefficient trying to use a tool that wasn’t built for the task we needed.”

This frustration isn’t rare. A telltale sign of having the wrong technology (or none at all) is when people try to use what they have in ways it’s not intended for. Such attempts may seem like a good idea, but often create more problems than they solve – including the cost of staff time and overall frustration.

“Market conduct is not a joke. I made it clear to our executives that we couldn’t take it lightly. If there was business that came in before an appointment was processed, that’s serious, and we wouldn’t have necessarily known or been alerted to it before AgentSync.”

Jay Howard, Director of Compliance and Risk Management, Service Insurance Companies

For an insurance carrier that’s trying to grow revenue, anything that stands in the way of selling is a major roadblock. Service Insurance Companies is no exception. And, within the highly regulated insurance industry, the most serious threat to sales and revenue is compliance (if not done right). If, for example, a producer sells a policy before the state receives and fully processes their appointment, that’s something that “just can’t happen,” according to Howard.

Given the serious nature of market conduct and the scrutiny every insurer is under, Howard said he didn’t have a hard time making the case for an automated compliance solution to his leaders at Service Insurance Companies.

Another selling point, Howard said, was that the status quo didn’t allow him to do his job to the best of his abilities. Without a solution to do the heavy lifting involved in producer compliance management, he was stuck in the weeds. Howard and his small team spent their time applying for producer appointments, tracking and managing them by hand, verifying they were active before a producer sells, and trying to collect information by hand if regulators ever asked.

Howard’s narrow focus on the very important task of producer appointments added a layer of additional, unintended risk to Service Insurance Companies’ business. “I’m also our enterprise risk manager,” Howard said, “Before AgentSync, it was more difficult for me to zoom out and think about the bigger picture because I was dealing with appointments.”

An agile and secure solution

“AgentSync’s agility was a big selling point for us. That, and the security and cloud-based nature we saw AgentSync had set it apart from others we were considering, especially from our technical stakeholder’s perspective.”

Jay Howard, Director of Compliance and Risk Management, Service Insurance Companies

With leadership in agreement about the absolute necessity of investing in a compliance management solution, Howard began looking for the right one. For many in his position, getting the IT department’s buy-in is a challenge when looking at any new software. Lucky for Howard, an IT leader was actually the first one to suggest taking a look at AgentSync.

When he started demoing compliance technology, Howard was struck by how agile the AgentSync platform was. He knew a fast-growing company like Service Insurance Companies would need the ability to scale up, and sometimes down, the number of agents it appoints. He also wanted a solution that could integrate with other pieces of the company’s tech stack to create greater efficiencies beyond producer compliance.

From an IT perspective, AgentSync certainly stood out from the crowd. Security’s important with any type of technology, particularly with cloud-based solutions where information is stored outside the strict watchful eye of a company’s internal IT department. The fact that Service Insurance Company’s IT leadership felt confident in AgentSync’s information security was one less hurdle for Howard and the compliance team to overcome to get what they really needed.

Benefits from compliance to accounting and beyond

“The first benefit I noticed when we got AgentSync was that I wasn’t having to spend my weekends catching up on processing appointments by hand anymore. It just took that work immediately off my plate.”

Jay Howard, Director of Compliance and Risk Management, Service Insurance Companies

Anyone who’s had to cram more work into a week than there are hours understands the pain of the never-ending to-do list that often bleeds into weekends and time off. It’s particularly frustrating when the tasks spilling into your life are ones you know could be largely automated. That’s why, for Howard and his team, AgentSync brought an immediate ROI of getting their lives back!

With the tedious parts of producer compliance off his plate, Howard had time in his day to focus on the “big-picture stuff” he really wanted and needed to be doing. For Tina Templeton, who’s in charge of the day-to-day producer appointment process, the job became a lot more enjoyable with the help of modern insurance infrastructure. In fact, she’s embraced the technology and taken advantage of the numerous training resources AgentSync provides, adding AgentSync expert to her long list of skills.

As for concrete improvements Howard, his team, and the entire Service Insurance Companies staff have seen, Howard points to two specifically.

Reporting: Before AgentSync, Howard said he’d have to clone himself to have enough time to gather all the information a state might come asking for. Now, he can access reports for information on any one (or all) of the 300-plus producers the company works with at any given time, “at the drop of a hat.”

Accounting: Like any accounting department, Service Insurance Companies’ accounting team likes numbers and budgets. They need to see what the company spends on each producer in each state at a very detailed level. This can be tens of thousands of dollars each month in state appointment fees, and the accounting team needs it broken out at a line-item level. Previously, this was another one of Howard’s weekend jobs. Now, he said, “I can get the report in two minutes and send it over to accounting.”

Service and support: We’d all like to think the partners we choose to work with will support us in our times of need. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. In fact, world-class service and support are more of the exception than the rule in business software these days. Howard raved at the level of support he and his team received from AgentSync – from the start of the sales process through the present day.

“There’s been a helpfullness and responsiveness from the AgentSync team that’s really differentiated them from others. Whereas we can’t even get someone on the phone from other vendors, at AgentSync, everyone from our sales rep to our customer success manager to the support team responds immediately to anything from the biggest to the smallest questions.”

Jay Howard, Director of Compliance and Risk Management, Service Insurance Companies

How AgentSync helps Service Insurance Companies

• Eliminates time-consuming and laborious tasks that staff previously had to work overtime to complete
• Provides complete peace of mind that no producer is selling in any state without the right appointments fully in place
• Allows the compliance team, accounting, leadership, and regulators quick access and a transparent view of any information they need
• Gives them the ability to export data at regulators’ request without spending any extra time