The 6 Stages of Compliance Grief: How Top Insurance Carriers Are Revolutionizing Compliance Management with AgentSync

This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.

Does your organization have a compliance problem?

It’s OK. We won’t tell anyone.

If you’re not entirely sure, we’ve got a way to check your symptoms here. But if you’re fairly certain that compliance management is costing your business too much money, taking too long, and even deterring employees, agency partners, or individual producers from working with you, then you’re in the right place.

We’ve seen a bit of everything as we work with insurance agencies, carriers, and MGAs/MGUs to transform the way they manage producer and adjuster license compliance. Whether you’re still handling state licenses on paper or paying several expensive vendors to manage it for you (and still not feeling confident it’s done right), we know other companies that’ve been there.

CTA/button: Download Does This Sound Familiar? A Guide to the Most Common Distribution Workforce Compliance Challenges and How Top Carriers Solved Them (In Their Own Words)

There’s no shame in admitting that your business could be managing compliance better. After all, it’s a complex and daunting task to make sure every producer, adjuster, and dually licensed broker-dealer is licensed and appointed appropriately for every line of business in every jurisdiction. Plus, it doesn’t always feel like compliance is tied directly to revenue, even though it is!

“Our lifeblood is our ability to sell. So, anything that could potentially inhibit that ability in any state, on any given day, has real impacts.”

An AgentSync MGA customer

So, if compliance is a pain point at your organization, we can empathize (as can all of the customers we’ve partnered with up to now). We’ve put together a guide that points to a way forward, letting other insurance carriers tell you in their own words how making the switch to AgentSync transformed their worlds.

Six stages of compliance woes

1. The “Before” scenario: A common struggle

Many carriers find themselves bogged down by legacy technology and manual processes. Those factors make managing producer compliance a time-consuming and error-prone task that no one wants to do! These challenges can stall essential functions such as selling policies, recruiting downstream distribution partners, and paying commissions. Ultimately, they impact every aspect of your business from top to bottom and can hinder your ability to operate effectively.

“We had four full-time employees working on producer compliance management and it would still take us two and a half or three months, or even longer, to get brokers processed. The length of this process was actually a deterrent to agents and agencies we would have liked to work with before.”

2. The breaking point

Most organizations reach a turning point when they realize they just can’t keep doing things the way they’ve always done them. Whether it’s finding that manual processes can’t scale with your growth, the risk of state fees and penalties for market conduct issues, or the realization that you need to overhaul the agent experience to compete in the modern insurance market, something’s got to give! This breaking point is usually years, if not decades, in the making.

“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 all 50 states’ regulations. We knew there was just no way we were ever going to catch up compliance-wise without some sort of solution.”

An AgentSync carrier customer

3. Envisioning success

Sometimes it’s easier to know what you don’t want than what you do. For insurance carriers seeking a new way to manage compliance, it’s easy to get interested in anything that looks better than the status quo. But, to truly be successful, you have to know and define what success looks like at your organization.

Typically, this involves automation, efficiency, and an improved experience for internal staff and downstream partners alike. For many AgentSync customers, specific goals like shortening the agent onboarding time, saving money on unnecessary appointments, and having a compliance process that moves as quickly as other parts of the business are key markers of success.

“I always try to be thoughtful about the user experience, and specifically the experience of our agency partners. I want to be sure their experience working with us is positive. We were looking for a solution to make it easy and time-saving for them instead of a negative experience that they begrudgingly get through.”

An AgentSync carrier customer

4. The search for a better way

And so the hunt for a new way of doing things begins. While at first glance the market seems flooded with options, many carriers soon realize there are too many promises and not enough proof. The journey through evaluating potential solutions highlights the reality that many systems aren’t as modern, customizable, or insurance industry-specific as they claim, or as an insurance carrier needs.

“When we were evaluating compliance technology solutions, the other products looked dated, bland, and didn’t seem to be customizable. They were hard to navigate and hard to read. They also didn’t impress us with their insurance industry expertise. In fact, some seemed quite unfamiliar with the industry.”

An AgentSync agency customer

5. Enter: AgentSync

After seeing what’s out there to choose from, insurance carriers (and agencies, MGAs, MGUs, BPOs, FMOs…you get the idea!) partner with AgentSync. The reasons they do so span from our agile and nimble technology to our unparalleled implementation and support teams. Add on top of that our modern interface that’s intuitive and user-friendly; our accurate-to-the-day data pulled from the industry’s sources of truth like NIPR, FINRA, and others; and our deep in-house insurance industry expertise, and you’ve got a recipe not just for success but for transformation.

“No matter how good a solution may look, it’s our people that need to be comfortable with new process and technology. AgentSync kept our subject experts and staff involved through every step all the way through a period of stabilization, after implementation.”

An AgentSync carrier customer

6. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ROI

Carriers leveraging AgentSync have seen remarkable transformations in their compliance management that translate into measurable ROI: everything from saving money previously spent on multiple outside vendors to the ability to reallocate internal headcount to more impactful roles. Of course, the intangible benefits are significant, too. Insurance carrier customers report better peace of mind knowing they’ve got compliance on lock, greater employee and agent satisfaction with their processes, and a long list of other benefits.

“AgentSync tracks key compliance data and automates tasks that we previously had to go to multiple websites and sources to handle. It’s also set up for Just-in-Time Appointments, which saves us money while keeping every agent compliant for selling.”

An AgentSync carrier partner

Where are you at in your compliance management journey?

If any (or all) of these stages of compliance woes resonate with you, we’d like to propose that AgentSync may be the solution you’ve been looking (or wishing) for. To read more about other insurance carriers who’ve experienced the six stages of compliance woes themselves, and how AgentSync radically transformed their businesses, download our free guide now.

If you want to skip to the best part and see how AgentSync can help you achieve the same results, get in touch with one of our compliance experts today.

Topics
Carriers
Agencies