This put up is a part of a collection sponsored by AgentSync.
Insurance coverage is a extremely regulated business, and, with a producer workforce that’s turning over as a era retires and indicators over their companies, decreasing time spent on handbook information entry for each inner and exterior groups is essential to long-term development.
After I took on the position of president at Bridger Insurance coverage Providers a bit greater than a yr in the past, one among my first priorities was to streamline operations. As a lot because the business likes handbook, I used to be prepared to fireside “handbook.”
Appointing was a kind of processes that was too handbook and required an excessive amount of hands-on consideration for an organization that has a whole bunch of workplaces across the nation. Previous to working with AgentSync, our course of went one thing like:
- A producer would ship us an electronic mail or name us to ask to be appointed
- Our staff would ship a PDF of our company settlement, an digital funds switch settlement, a W-9, and so on.
- The producer would ship again every little thing with copies of their licenses
- Our employees would manually kind up every little thing to place it into our shopper relationship administration system and coverage admin system
It was a really inefficient course of, regardless of trying very like the method of quite a few insurance coverage firms working in our house.
Gaining effectivity by way of course of enhancements
Previous to my coming aboard as president, Bridger was already working with AgentSync and had applied an agent onboarding portal to automate this course of. This can be a closely regulated business, and we will solely keep appointments and do enterprise with producers who’re correctly licensed. So, synchronizing nationwide producer numbers (NPNs) and having the ability to let businesses know to get their producers present on their persevering with schooling (CE) and licenses was a good way to make sure compliance.
That first step of automating producer onboarding and appointments helped additional our repute as a technology-forward firm. But, we’re seeing the insurance coverage business change, with long-time company house owners leaving the business and promoting their companies. So, once I noticed our portal nonetheless had 40 or so questions, I knew we had some room for enchancment.
Relating to on-line processes, if one thing is simply too lengthy or sophisticated, there will likely be a drop-off in completion. So we examined our portal to critically take a look at the info we have been accumulating. We tried to expertise the method as our customers would, and perceive the place the bottlenecks or ache factors have been. And we determined there have been plenty of locations we might create much more efficiencies past a digitized model of our onboarding course of.
Buyer Success staff ranges up the partnership
Taking a handbook, paper-based, course of and making it digital isn’t the identical as being fashionable or digital. We all know our companions don’t have the time to spend 45 minutes on an appointment utility – whether or not digital or on paper. So, we began a dialog with the AgentSync staff about additional streamline our onboarding and appointment course of.
One of many challenges we confronted was managing producers and company companions throughout a whole bunch of places in several states. Rethinking our onboarding course of was going to require plenty of hands-on studying, and, thankfully, the AgentSync Buyer Success staff proved to be as much as the duty.
From area mapping between AgentSync and our e-signature instruments to stripping down required fields and making certain the person expertise was strong, the AgentSync staff was with us each step of the way in which. Not solely did they do what we requested, however they engaged with us to offer suggestions and enter on methods to enhance our course of, too.
The staff at AgentSync noticed this as a problem to higher not simply the Bridger expertise, but in addition the AgentSync options set. Figuring out that we had a staff behind us, dedicated to delivering one thing that actually works for all of us, made the method far simpler. As a substitute of taking hours to kind and retype data, fields autofill throughout our platforms. Our potential companions can join on-line, entry the portal, and apply for an appointment in a matter of minutes. Our admins verify functions to make sure the knowledge is all there, then click on a button to create a signature package deal. I signal it, the producer indicators it, and we’re accomplished. And in all of that, we all know state-specific compliance guidelines are baked in so we don’t fear about lacking them.
Over time, these efficiencies flip into revenue. Over the past 12 months, we’ve grown our enterprise greater than 450 %, so having an environment friendly, automated, and streamlined onboarding and appointing course of is instrumental.
Utilizing improvements to satisfy a altering business for development
Trade longtimers are growing older out. Whereas there are lots of statistics to again this up, even anecdotally, Bridger is seeing a justifiable share of people who find themselves retiring and promoting their companies. Most of those gross sales find yourself with identify modifications, entity principal modifications, and a complete course of of adjusting data for the enterprise entities and the producers concerned.
We’re rising our base at the same time as this business changing-of-the-guard happens as a result of we’re making this shift easy, with e-signature instruments and auto-filling integrations into our different techniques, all of which make it simpler to draw new company house owners and retain the companies we already contract with. However there are lots of carriers on the market which can be nonetheless utilizing written papers to deal with these modifications.
Making the most of know-how places us a reduce above. As a substitute of recruiting new workplaces by having to make a prolonged case for why they need to sit by way of an hour or extra of printing, filling, and scanning paperwork, we will current potential companions with a QR code the place they’ll apply for an appointment straight from their telephone.
Partnering with AgentSync has been a part of this imaginative and prescient – we’ve come to anticipate the responsive communication wanted to implement modifications as we see them, and we all know we will get responses or conferences with our AgentSync staff in a measure of hours, not days. That has set us up for achievement in higher concentrating on our alternatives in untapped market areas, profiting from market cycles, and leveraging our momentum to develop and scale.
At Bridger, we’ve seen that operational effectivity, efficient compliance, and our companions’ expertise converge on this speedy onboarding course of constructed on fashionable insurance coverage infrastructure. Because the market situations proceed to drive these improvements, we’re trying ahead to what comes subsequent.
Hear from different clients about their experiences working with AgentSync. See how AgentSync may help you innovate.
Subjects
Businesses