This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.
Historically, compliance has been viewed as a necessary evil for insurance companies. This dynamic often puts compliance and operations teams at odds with sales teams, creating silos and creating division within the organization.
Everyone is used to being the “no” team on compliance and considers it a priority only for as long as it needs to be. In fact, for some carriers, onboarding may be one of the only times a producer is subject to compliance team review.
For carriers stuck in this mindset, compliance is unwieldy and burdensome, with organizational knowledge and processes challenged by professionals seeking to find meaning and purpose in their work. Turnover can hinder efforts to establish thoughtful and efficient teams.
Let’s take a look at the current challenges of compliance and how a shift in mindset can transform this cost center into a core aspect of your business architecture.
Current approaches to compliance in the insurance industry
Even among carriers that have technology-based compliance solutions in place, many carriers still work in spreadsheets or on a single system that requires a lot of manual interaction. . Each process can be very tedious, so teams can face common challenges such as:
- Nominate all desired producers now, as the nomination process can take over a month
- No insight into individual producers, waiting for producer level data from agency
- Verify that the producer is “authentic” for the relevant state using a paper or PDF license
- We try to speed up the booking and onboarding process by running steps asynchronously, but this only creates more confusion.
These are all concessions that try to bridge the gap between the full compliance you need and the speed and service your hiring team wants, but producer compliance ends up being chaotic. Having to look in three places to answer questions from recruiters, agency partners, or producers about where they are in the onboarding process can be inefficient and demoralizing. I feel that
You know this process can be frustrating for both producers and internal teams. But they may also be overlooking the business risks of maintaining the status quo.
- Paper licenses pose a regulatory risk because they only verify that the producer was in good standing with the state when the license or renewal was originally issued.
- Nominating everyone who raised their hand could result in hefty fees for those who don’t write on your behalf.
- Asynchronous processes become cumbersome, do not save time, only cause confusion
- While it often takes each day to onboard a new producer, they often sell business for a competitor, assuming they persist to complete the onboarding process rather than abandoning the relationship completely. I am writing.
Rethink producer compliance as part of core business functions
What if we re-prioritized compliance? What if we viewed compliance as a critical component of core business functions, rather than a sidecar to onboarding or an obstacle to overcome?
Technology is not the only (complete) answer
Technology is certainly part of the answer. However, many carriers that have digitized their processes are often just digitizing their current processes. How many carriers have made a technology upgrade and then started collecting paper licenses via PDF included in an email instead of a paper fax? That’s not an upgrade. It’s all about digitalization.
Instead, with organizational buy-in, carriers need to transform not only their compliance processes but also their business processes to think about compliance in terms of quality data.
Better data turns compliance into a business center
Compliance today looks like a checklist of necessary (but time-consuming) processes. By dividing data into its critical data components, companies can not only better achieve compliance, but also begin to imagine how that data can be used to make important and efficient business decisions. Masu.
For example, many carriers have “pending” or “pending” fees. These are thorny points in the relationship between carriers and their agents, producers and other downstream distribution partners. But carriers who want to do their due diligence know that some of the biggest regulatory actions occur when carriers pay fees to producers who sell their business without obtaining a license. As such, they understand that checking producer licenses before cutting a check is an important aspect of protecting your business from risk.
Rethinking the commission cycle as a set of data (data about insurance sellers, licenses and appointments, upline structure, contracts with insurance companies) can help you envision how to get the most reliable data. Obtaining data through the National Insurance Production Registry (NIPR) provides the most accurate and reliable data on producers. We hope that your policy management system and policy management software will keep your upline relationships and commission structure up to date. Therefore, if carriers can integrate that data into their entire fee system and workflow, fees can be paid automatically. know All payments are compliant. This allows staff to focus only on commissions that violate risk-averse parameters.
Once your business shifts to this mindset, there are endless ways to leverage compliance data in core business functions. Read more about how you can leverage disaggregated compliance data to go beyond simple producer management.
Best practices for adopting compliance as a data function
How can you move your organization to this prosperous future state where continuous compliance and innovative data drive efficiency, profitability, and competitiveness?
Accept that onboarding matters and that individual producers matter
It may be easy to onboard agencies and downplay individual-level data collection, but understanding your own business data actually requires collecting more data from producers on the front end. It starts with making sure you are.
Use data sourced via API from trusted industry sources
Paper licenses are no longer required, and producers no longer need to print or make copies of PDF licenses. This only indicates that the producer was licensed at some point, and does not tell us if the producer is currently raising red flags. Use direct sync with NIPR to ensure that your producer data is actually up to date.
Opt-in combination of portal and automatic notifications to meet individual producers where they are
Self-service is important for producers. But so is the attentive service we provide for you. We deliver the best of both worlds and meet producer expectations by providing transparency throughout the process. The more producers can do themselves, the less time your internal team will spend on reminders, updates, and huddles.
Get organizational buy-in
It may seem impossible to gain the authority to support this change in thinking. But presenting a vision of your future state can be a big help. These potential benefits include:
- Truly visualize ROI for downstream distributors
- Smooth onboarding = reduced risk and increased retention of hired partners
- Reduce booking costs both during onboarding and renewals
- Pivot faster to respond to changing economic conditions
- Reduction in operational personnel
Making such a significant change to an organization’s approach to compliance cannot be done alone. But improving compliance ultimately starts with rethinking your data.
At AgentSync, we help you meet producers by meeting them where you are. If you’re looking for a producer compliance management solution that displays data with robust reporting and intuitive dashboards, allowing your team to monitor license and reservation information across distribution channels in near real-time. we have it. If you have in-house software but need data from industry-authored sources to integrate into other core systems. we have it too. Or, if you want to offload processes to external teams while maintaining the visibility and data access that makes compliance a business differentiator. we can also cover you there.
Let’s get started With demo today.
