This publish is a part of a sequence sponsored by AgentSync.

Insurance coverage is a extremely regulated business, and, with a producer workforce that’s turning over as a technology retires and indicators over their companies, decreasing time spent on handbook information entry for each inside and exterior groups is vital to long-term development.

Once I took on the function of president at Bridger Insurance coverage Companies slightly greater than a yr in the past, certainly one of my first priorities was to streamline operations. As a lot because the business likes handbook, I used to be prepared to fireplace “handbook.”

Appointing was a type of processes that was too handbook and required an excessive amount of hands-on consideration for a corporation that has tons of of places of work 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 group 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 thing with copies of their licenses
• Our workers would manually kind up every thing to place it into our shopper relationship administration system and coverage admin system

It was a really inefficient course of, regardless of wanting very similar to the method of quite a few insurance coverage corporations 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. It is a closely regulated business, and we will solely preserve appointments and do enterprise with producers who’re correctly licensed. So, synchronizing nationwide producer numbers (NPNs) and with the ability to let companies know to get their producers present on their persevering with schooling (CE) and licenses was an effective way to make sure compliance.

That first step of automating producer onboarding and appointments helped additional our popularity 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.

On the subject of on-line processes, if one thing is just too lengthy or difficult, there might be a drop-off in completion. So we examined our portal to critically take a look at the information we had been gathering. We tried to expertise the method as our customers would, and perceive the place the bottlenecks or ache factors had been. And we determined there have been a whole lot of locations we might create much more efficiencies past a digitized model of our onboarding course of.

Buyer Success group 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 group about the right way to additional streamline our onboarding and appointment course of.

One of many challenges we confronted was managing producers and company companions throughout tons of of areas in numerous states. Rethinking our onboarding course of was going to require a whole lot of hands-on studying, and, happily, the AgentSync Buyer Success group proved to be as much as the duty.

From subject mapping between AgentSync and our e-signature instruments to stripping down required fields and making certain the consumer expertise was strong, the AgentSync group was with us each step of the best way. Not solely did they do what we requested, however they engaged with us to provide suggestions and enter on methods to enhance our course of, too.

The group at AgentSync noticed this as a problem to raised not simply the Bridger expertise, but in addition the AgentSync options set. Understanding that we had a group behind us, dedicated to delivering one thing that actually works for all of us, made the method far simpler. As an alternative of taking hours to kind and retype data, fields autofill throughout our platforms. Our potential companions can enroll on-line, entry the portal, and apply for an appointment in a matter of minutes. Our admins verify purposes to make sure the data is all there, then click on a button to create a signature package deal. I signal it, the producer indicators it, and we’re carried out. 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. During the last 12 months, we’ve grown our enterprise greater than 450 p.c, so having an environment friendly, automated, and streamlined onboarding and appointing course of is instrumental.

Utilizing improvements to satisfy a altering business for development

Business 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 adjustments, entity principal adjustments, and a complete course of of fixing 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 programs, 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 are nonetheless utilizing written papers to deal with these adjustments.

Profiting from expertise places us a reduce above. As an alternative of recruiting new places of work 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 will apply for an appointment straight from their telephone.

Partnering with AgentSync has been a part of this imaginative and prescient – we’ve got come to count on the responsive communication wanted to implement adjustments as we see them, and we all know we will get responses or conferences with our AgentSync group in a measure of hours, not days. That has set us up for achievement in higher focusing on our alternatives in untapped market areas, making the most of 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 circumstances proceed to drive these improvements, we’re wanting ahead to what comes subsequent.

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