Why Small MGA Teams Should Automate Compliance

This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.

Small but mighty is the realest of deals. Yet, even (or especially, depending on your view) small teams can benefit from producer licensing automation.

We get it when smaller teams raise the question – why mess with a good thing? When your team is humming along smoothly and you already feel so very efficient, it can seem like tempting fate to make a tech spend for something that isn’t a problem (yet).

Funnily enough, when you think about it, this is just the nouveau tech mindset equivalent to legacy systems’ “but this is how we’ve always …”

So, a quick rundown of some of the reasons even small, efficient teams at MGAs should automate their producer licensing:

1. It’s not all about you

Producers are tired of endlessly rekeying their information. Even if you have a team member who can sweet-talk a producer into submitting their data, a drawn-out manual process is still hard on the producer. Plus, we’d bet that team member is better-served using their sweet-talking skills elsewhere in the business.

2. Ready to grow? Us too

Our AgentSync Manage product is priced per national producer number (NPN), so if your producer pool is small today, so is your bill. And if you plan to grow, we’re incentivized to help you, and to scale right alongside that growth.

3. Don’t waste your human resources

If you want to keep your team small, then digitizing repetitive low-attention tasks like producer license compliance is paramount to your success. Your team members wear multiple hats by necessity, and automating the producer license verification piece of your onboarding makes that hat smaller so your team member can wear more (hopefully we haven’t worn out this metaphor).

4. Appointing? Tracking? Do both. Or either

If you’re an MGA or MGU, you’re responsible for the agents who work with you, but some of them you’re more responsible for than others. Do they get different tabs on your spreadsheet? With an automated compliance process, you can easily separate the two and manage them differently, with alerts and automated emails directed at specific audiences instead of treating them all the same.

5. Teams in transition

Not all MGAs want to stay in the same place. Some are looking to merge, be acquired, or transform into full-on carriers. Transitions like that can be a nightmare for compliance. Yet, with real-time tracking for insurance producers, keep compliance on lock the whole time.

6. Risks are bigger for smaller teams

At bigger organizations, the chance that someone’s manual entry goes awry is huge. But the compliance consequences are easier to spread out when you have a huge team. As a smaller company, becoming a bullseye for state regulators can be a mission-ending experience. And make no mistake, most states hold MGAs responsible for the agents under their purview. An automated compliance process decreases the risk of manual entry errors.

7. Less pressure on your experienced people

Maybe you’ve recruited some industry wonks who have a lot of experience and are plugged in on producer licensing. Still, that’s a lot of pressure to put on a single person. It’s harder to take a vacation when the whole company’s licensing compliance rides on your shoulders. If that person grows out of that role or quits, who will take over? Having a tech solution allows for more seamless transitions and lets you put people with long-term industry knowledge to better use.

8. Our team is your team

At AgentSync, you’re getting more than a software-as-a-service solution. You’re also getting a team dedicated to your producer licensing success. You don’t need to add anyone to your health care plan, and yet you get additional back-office support staff.

9. Scorecard!

Want to easily visualize how you could grow or where your compliance gaps are? If you’re working on a spreadsheet, getting this information currently means someone spending hours comparing columns on a spreadsheet. They probably tally those numbers (maybe in a different spreadsheet) and then show it as a pie chart or graph on a quarterly or annual basis. But you could have this at your fingertips every day with AgentSync Manage.

10. Attracting partners

If you’re trying to bring on carrier partners or onboard agencies for new distribution channels, having an automated license verification system is additional protection not just for you but for them, too. Watching each other’s back is a great way to sell a partnership, and it makes it much easier to sell potential partners on a small team when you can bring a big-team level of proficiency to those kinds of details.

Particularly for small teams, there’s a golden age where you feel like your business is big enough to handle what it needs to while small enough that you all know each other and are having a good time. Peak flow. It’s magic.

Good software won’t impede that – instead, it enables you to stay in the zone for longer. If you want to see how else AgentSync can keep your team in a “flow state,” take a look at our solutions.

Topics Insurance Wholesale