This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.
Insurance is a highly regulated industry, and with a producer workforce changing as a generation retires and signs up their businesses, reducing time spent on manual data entry for internal and external teams is key to growth. long-term.
When I took over as president of Bridger Insurance Services a little over a year ago, one of my first priorities was streamlining operations. As much as the industry loves the manual, I was ready to say goodbye to “manual.”
Appointing was one of those processes that was too manual and required too much hands-on attention for a company that has hundreds of offices across the country. Before working with AgentSync, our process went something like:
- A producer would email or call us to request to be appointed
- Our team would send a PDF of our agency agreement, electronic funds transfer agreement, W-9, etc.
- The producer would return everything with copies of their licenses.
- Our staff would manually type everything to put into our customer relationship management system and policy administration system.
It was a terribly inefficient process, despite looking a lot like the process of many insurance companies operating in our space.
Gain efficiency through process improvements
Before I joined as president, Bridger was already working with AgentSync and had implemented an agent onboarding portal to automate this process. This is a heavily regulated industry, and we can only make appointments and do business with properly licensed producers. So, synchronizing the National Producer Numbers (NPNs) and being able to inform agencies to update their producers on their continuing education (CE) and licenses was a great way to ensure compliance.
That first step of automating producer onboarding and appointments helped enhance our reputation as a technology-forward company. However, we are seeing changes in the insurance industry, with long-time agency owners leaving the industry and selling their businesses. So when I saw that our portal still had about 40 questions, I knew we had room for improvement.
When it comes to online processes, if something is too long or complicated, there will be a drop in completion. So we took a look at our portal to take a critical look at the data we were collecting. We tried to experience the process as our users would and understand where the bottlenecks or pain points were. And we decided that there were many places where we could create even more efficiencies beyond a digitized version of our onboarding process.
Customer Success Team Enhances Partnership
It is not the same to take a manual process, on paper, and make it electronic, than to be modern or digital. We know our members don’t have time to spend 45 minutes on an appointment request, whether digital or on paper. So we began a conversation with the AgentSync team about how to further streamline our onboarding and appointment process.
One of the challenges we faced was managing producer and agency partners at hundreds of locations in different states. Rethinking our onboarding process was going to require a lot of learning by doing, and luckily the AgentSync customer success team proved up to the task.
From mapping fields between AgentSync and our eSignature tools to removing required fields and ensuring a robust user experience, the AgentSync team was with us every step of the way. Not only did they do what we asked, but they also engaged with us to give us feedback and suggestions on ways to improve our process.
The AgentSync team saw this as a challenge to improve not only the Bridger experience, but also the AgentSync suite of solutions. Knowing that we had a team behind us, committed to delivering something that really works for all of us, made the process so much easier. Instead of taking hours to type and retype information, fields are auto-completed on all of our platforms. Our prospective partners can register online, access the portal, and request an appointment in a matter of minutes. Our administrators check the applications to make sure all the information is there, then click a button to create a signature package. I sign it, the producer signs it and that’s it. And in all of that, we know that state-specific compliance rules are built in, so we don’t worry about breaking them.
Over time, these efficiencies turn into profits. Over the past 12 months, we’ve grown our business by more than 450 percent, so having an efficient, automated, and streamlined onboarding and appointment process is critical.
Using innovations to meet a changing industry for growth
Industry veterans are getting old. While there are plenty of statistics to back this up, even anecdotally, Bridger is seeing his fair share of people retire and sell their businesses. Most of these sales end with name changes, parent entity changes, and an entire information change process for the business entities and producers involved.
We are expanding our base even as this changing of the industry guard occurs because we are making this change simple, with electronic signature tools and auto-fill integrations into our other systems, all of which make it easier to attract new agency owners and retain the businesses we We already have a contract. But there are many operators who still use written documents to handle these changes.
Taking advantage of technology puts us a cut above. Instead of recruiting new offices having to make a lengthy case for why they should spend an hour or more printing, filling out, and scanning paperwork, we can present potential partners with a QR code where they can request an appointment right from their phone.
Partnering with AgentSync has been part of this vision: We’ve come to expect the responsive communication necessary to implement changes as we see them, and we know we can get answers or meetings with our AgentSync team in a matter of hours, not days. That has set us up for success in best targeting our opportunities in untapped market areas, taking advantage of market cycles and leveraging our momentum to grow and scale.
At Bridger, we’ve seen operational efficiency, effective compliance, and partner expertise come together in this fast-paced onboarding process built on a modern insurance infrastructure. As market conditions continue to drive these innovations, we look forward to what comes next.
Hear from other customers about their experiences working with AgentSync. See how AgentSync can help you innovate.
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