10 Compliance Department New Year’s Resolutions Worth Keeping for 2023

This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.

Happy New Year! You’ve enjoyed the end of the holiday season glut. Now you’re looking for ways to tighten up those processes, and what better way to start your year off right than with compliance resolutions?

Sure, 99 percent of resolutions fail (or some other made up statistic, probably). But with AgentSync’s help, these are simple to keep, and they’re worth the effort!

It’s time. Strike a new pose, turn over a leaf, and buckle up, because here are the best compliance resolutions for the coming year for those of us tasked with maintaining producer licenses or appointments.

Without further ado:

1. We will not pit compliance against recruitment and sales

Silos! Silos everywhere! Data silos are turning your compliance and recruitment or sales teams into a modern day Capulet vs. Montague face off. You know how it goes. A producer calls their recruiter to get details on how long it will be until they’re fully onboarded, which sets off a string of pressure-filled emails and calls to the compliance department, which is waiting on a confirmation from the department of insurance or a background check to return.

Cut it out! Use compliance software to give all teams insight into the process, and to make licensing or appointing more automatic. The end result: Realigning your teams to be on the same team.

2. We will reduce the number of systems our team has to turn to

Click. Click. Click. Clickity-clickity-click. That is the sound of a compliance process that requires your team to move from one software to another to another instead of being able to execute a single function from start to finish within one software ecosystem. If you have a compliance solution that integrates with your other tech and regulatory sources appropriately, you can give everyone a single source for license and appointment data.

3. We will stop requiring copies of paper licensing

At this point, everyone in the industry should be relying on the real-time data provided by the National Producer Information Registry. Yet, some carriers (and therefore their downstream MGA, MGU, or agency partners) still require a paper license, even though that paper copy of a license may not accurately reflect the up-to-date reality of a producer or adjuster. It’s time to move on from paper.

4. We will use data to identify the bottlenecks in our onboarding process

Every process, even a fairly efficient one, will have bottlenecks. How many are there? How long are they? What are their negative consequences? These are the questions that deserve data-backed answers. Whether you’ve got a producer management software solution, you’re looking for one, or you’re just gauging how you’re doing, identifying bottlenecks and putting data points on them is a worthwhile exercise in pursuit of excellence.

5. We will turn our agent experience into a conduit for creating raving fans

Just because you’re in the compliance department doesn’t mean you aren’t impacting the agent experience. In fact, from what we’ve seen, the compliance experience can make or break a business’s relationship with an agent. So, if you want to show that your team delivers on the bottom line, make 2023 about cultivating a reputation of excellence with your agents, even as you cover all the bases of compliance.

6. We won’t be one of those teams that invest in tech just to say they invested in tech

You know what we mean. We’ve all seen businesses that park money in software that underperforms, that doesn’t meet their needs, or that never reaches full implementation, all in the name of being tech forward. But that’s not your team. Not this year. You’re going to be intentional, to work with the best, and to only adopt tech that can:

Integrate up and down your full software stack
Automate needlessly time-consuming processes
Solve your actual needs with real-time data

7. We will ensure insurance agents are in compliance for every sale

In the coming year, you aren’t going to guess at compliance. You aren’t going to call accounting to talk about balancing mistaken commission payments. You aren’t going to agonize over the three months that license lapsed in Oklahoma before anyone realized.

Instead, you’re going to get compliance software that ensures every sale is compliant with a properly licensed and appointed producer every time. Go you!

8. We won’t make human people spend days re-typing things

The reality is, 2023 might be tighter at your company. But that doesn’t have to mean burnout as long as you work smarter not harder.

Compliance software that integrates data across systems can put a stop to the type, type, and re-type that all-too-often comes with onboarding or maintaining producer and adjuster information. The reality is that as insurance becomes a leaner industry, you likely want your people to put far more time into work that requires hands-on attention, skill, and a developed knowledge. Even simple autofill forms can save hours of work in the course of a week, hours that can be spent on other things like developing relationships, filling the gaps in thought-based work, and just taking a break to avoid burning out your talent.

9. We will use our data to power informed business decisions

Data-based business decision-making has been a powerful phrase that is very frequently just aspirational. You can give it power by using software solutions that actually deliver on this resolution with data surfaced from your use – not a best-case scenario or a set of assumptions, but actual timelines with real producers.

Using the right producer licensing software, you can also pull data from NIPR to understand in what states your producers are licensed, what lines of business they’re licensed in, and what carriers they hold appointments with. In that way, you can make business decisions about expanding your distribution partners or finding a new sales territory of least resistance, all based on data points collected from your own system.

10. Spend your time with people, not processes

Honestly, we should rename this one “take a vacation.” The genuine reality of manual processes for compliance is that you and your team spend a lot of time clicking around on a computer just trying to check a box and make sure information in different systems matches. Whether you can better-leverage that brain power for other things in your business, or whether you could just have the time margin to take a break, to talk to people in your company, to get a hobby and meet someone… Spending less time on compliance doesn’t have to mean taking on risk. With modern producer compliance management solutions, you can have a higher standard of compliance than ever while still spending less time doing ticky-tacky-typey work.

Ten resolutions may seem like a lot, but modern producer management solutions like AgentSync can automate processes that don’t require hands-on human attention and integrate your data thoroughly into your systems to end rekeying information and duplicate entries.

If you’re ready to see how AgentSync can help you keep these resolutions (and spend more time on those personal ones about growth and development), schedule your demo today.