This publish is a part of a collection sponsored by AgentSync.
Insurance coverage compliance is critical enterprise. Falling out of compliance can have actual penalties for everybody from insurance coverage businesses, carriers, MGAs, and MGUs, to particular person producers, adjusters, and dually licensed broker-dealers.
Whom you select to accomplice with in your compliance wants issues. Selecting the best know-how accomplice can remodel your insurance coverage licensing compliance practices from a nightmare right into a dream-come-true.
Selecting the mistaken accomplice, alternatively, can result in undesirable outcomes, equivalent to:
- Spending an excessive amount of cash on one thing that’s not assembly your wants
- Risking compliance and information safety mishaps
- Failing to attain organization-wide adoption and the continued use of handbook and error-prone processes
- Dropping employees and distribution channel companions due to how irritating it’s to work for – or with – you
Whereas the business urges insurance coverage companies to undertake extra trendy practices, many insurance coverage compliance know-how distributors nonetheless haven’t any qualms doing enterprise the best way they’ve at all times accomplished it. Typically, this consists of committing some critical “crimes” in opposition to their very own clients. No, we’re not speaking in regards to the sorts of crimes that land anybody in jail, however these transgressions are irritating, expensive, and simply plain mistaken nonetheless.
On this three-part collection, we’ll cowl a number of the most typical “crimes” we see insurance coverage compliance tech distributors committing in opposition to their buyer base. We’ve already coated crimes of the financial variety in addition to support crimes. On this third and last installment, we’re looking at know-how crimes. For those who’ve fallen sufferer to any of those tech-related crimes, then we’re sorry to say it, however the vendor you’ve invested your cash and assets in is a complete dud.
When insurance coverage compliance distributors commit know-how crimes
You may be capable of forgive the crimes that value your online business extra money and even those that create friction in your consumer expertise, but when the know-how itself doesn’t work, then what are you actually getting out of your compliance tech spend? Investing your time, power, and cash into an answer that doesn’t pay dividends is extra than simply irritating. It could negatively impression each facet of your online business, out of your information safety and status to your capability to scale and develop sooner or later.
Set your self up for long-term success by avoiding these generally perpetrated know-how crimes:
1. Soiled and rancid information
Making good business decisions relies heavily on your access to good data. The standard of your information is on the core of whether or not your compliance administration answer is benefiting you or simply costing you. Whether or not it’s as a result of technical errors that enable lacking or inaccurate information into your system, or intermittent syncs together with your information supply, inaccurate producer and adjuster licensing and appointment information will trigger issues for each a part of your online business.
Insurance coverage compliance requirements and laws are consistently altering and updating. If the answer you sought particularly that can assist you sustain with these items isn’t offering you with correct and full information, you may as effectively nonetheless be managing issues by hand. Whereas most compliance instruments available on the market nowadays sync to the business’s one supply of fact for producer info, keep in mind that not all syncs are created equal. Contemplate how usually the sync happens, the standard of the information acquired, and the way discrepancies are dealt with.
Buyer confession: “We’re discovering that our present answer’s PDB sync isn’t occurring. There’s this fixed defect they appear to be preventing and the knowledge out there by way of the product doesn’t appear correct.”
2. Nonetheless requiring spreadsheets
Some insurance coverage companies put up with know-how crimes like unhealthy or stale information and compensate for them by conserving inside spreadsheets to double-check the information that’s of their system. That is fairly presumably the most important know-how crime of all of them!
You possible went in search of a compliance vendor within the first place since you needed to switch your spreadsheets with a extra trendy tech answer. So why accept a “answer” that basically places you again at sq. one? No group ought to pay for know-how so unreliable that employees have to maintain their very own information and constantly cross-reference for accuracy. Discuss defeating the entire goal of digitization.
Buyer confession: “We steadily want copies of licenses. I can’t get that from the product, so I’m retaining copies of licenses in one other system.”
3. Outdated, siloed tech
Your tech stack ought to create efficiencies that assist modernize your online business, not make your workflows clunkier. Trendy insurance coverage infrastructure means being adaptive and making fixed enhancements to your compliance ecosystem. Any answer that stops enhancing the second the contract is signed ought to elevate a direct purple flag.
Options constructed on mainframe code don’t supply the identical flexibility as people who leverage a cloud-native architecture. They’re sometimes more durable (and even not possible) to combine with the opposite software program you employ for each day enterprise operations and might trigger main downtime and value inefficiencies while you’re able to scale your online business.
4. Processing unhealthy transactions
Some producer license administration applied sciences have inbuilt checks and balances to cease an invalid transaction earlier than it occurs. Others… don’t. Incomplete producer functions or license renewal types may end up in the state canceling the applying, however nonetheless conserving the related charges. With out a system that may flag a probably unhealthy transaction, you’re left with the danger of processing and paying for transactions that wanted additional human intervention earlier than going by way of.
On the very least, your compliance tech ought to provide the choice to construct warnings, alerts, and “laborious stops” into your workflows to maintain transactions from being processed when a producer doesn’t meet sure standards. The precise compliance administration answer will save your online business cash in the long term, not add further (and utterly avoidable) bills to your backside line.
Buyer confession: “The notifications in our present answer are fairly lackluster, and we’re billed per transaction. Typically we find yourself paying for a similar transaction a number of instances despite the fact that it solely went by way of as soon as.”
5. Exposes you to greater safety dangers
The info-driven nature of the insurance coverage enterprise means business gamers have extra cybersecurity considerations than most. The success of your group’s information safety is determined by the safety and preparedness of any third-party distributors or software program you employ. For those who’ve taken the mandatory steps to make sure your individual cyber hygiene, don’t let your compliance know-how vendor take you down with their very own lax safety practices.
By vetting compliance know-how distributors for his or her cybersecurity practices, you’ll be able to scale back the danger of an information breach and defend your status. If a vendor isn’t up-to-date on their cybersecurity necessities, they’re placing you in danger, and that’s simply not the recipe for a very good partnership.
Keep away from falling sufferer to know-how crimes out of your compliance vendor
For those who’re at the moment working with an insurance coverage compliance know-how that isn’t treating you the best way you deserve – in these methods or others! – see how AgentSync is completely different. AgentSync’s dedicated to the thought of Buyer Love. This implies honest and clear pricing, help that’s really supportive, and a tech platform that delights its customers and receives common updates and enhancements.
See how completely different insurance coverage compliance might be at your group; check out an AgentSync demo today.
