Crimes Against Customers: Part 3 – Technology Crimes

This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.

Insurance compliance is serious business. Falling out of compliance can have real consequences for everyone from insurance agencies, carriers, MGAs, and MGUs, to individual producers, adjusters, and dually licensed broker-dealers.

Whom you choose to partner with for your compliance needs matters. Choosing the right technology partner can transform your insurance licensing compliance practices from a nightmare into a dream-come-true.

Choosing the wrong partner, on the other hand, can lead to undesirable outcomes, such as:

Spending too much money on something that’s not meeting your needs
Risking compliance and data security mishaps
Failing to achieve organization-wide adoption and the continued use of manual and error-prone processes
Losing staff and distribution channel partners because of how frustrating it is to work for – or with – you

While the industry urges insurance businesses to adopt more modern practices, many insurance compliance technology vendors still have no qualms doing business the way they’ve always done it. Often, this includes committing some serious “crimes” against their own customers. No, we’re not talking about the kinds of crimes that land anyone in jail, but these transgressions are frustrating, costly, and just plain wrong nonetheless.

In this three-part series, we’ll cover some of the most common “crimes” we see insurance compliance tech vendors committing against their customer base. We’ve already covered crimes of the financial variety as well as support crimes. In this third and final installment, we’re taking a look at technology crimes. If you’ve fallen victim to any of these tech-related crimes, then we’re sorry to say it, but the vendor you’ve invested your money and resources in is a total dud.

When insurance compliance vendors commit technology crimes

You might be able to forgive the crimes that cost your business more money or even the ones that create friction in your user experience, but if the technology itself doesn’t work, then what are you really getting from your compliance tech spend? Investing your time, energy, and money into a solution that doesn’t pay dividends is more than just frustrating. It can negatively impact every aspect of your business, from your data security and reputation to your ability to scale and grow in the future.

Set yourself up for long-term success by avoiding these commonly perpetrated technology crimes:

1. Dirty and stale data

Making good business decisions relies heavily on your access to good data. The quality of your data is at the core of whether your compliance management solution is benefiting you or just costing you. Whether it’s due to technical errors that allow missing or inaccurate data into your system, or intermittent syncs with your data source, inaccurate producer and adjuster licensing and appointment data will cause problems for every part of your business.

Insurance compliance standards and regulations are constantly changing and updating. If the solution you sought specifically to help you keep up with these things isn’t providing you with accurate and complete data, you might as well still be managing things by hand. While most compliance tools on the market these days sync to the industry’s one source of truth for producer information, remember that not all syncs are created equal. Consider how often the sync occurs, the quality of the data received, and how discrepancies are handled.

Customer confession: “We’re finding that our current solution’s PDB sync isn’t occurring. There’s this constant defect they seem to be fighting and the information available through the product doesn’t seem accurate.”

2. Still requiring spreadsheets

Some insurance businesses put up with technology crimes like bad or stale data and compensate for them by keeping internal spreadsheets to double-check the data that’s in their system. This is quite possibly the biggest technology crime of them all!

You likely went looking for a compliance vendor in the first place because you wanted to replace your spreadsheets with a more modern tech solution. So why settle for a “solution” that essentially puts you back at square one? No organization should pay for technology so unreliable that staff need to keep their own records and continuously cross-reference for accuracy. Talk about defeating the whole purpose of digitization.

Customer confession: “We frequently need copies of licenses. I can’t get that from the product, so I’m retaining copies of licenses in another system.”

3. Old, siloed tech

Your tech stack should create efficiencies that help modernize your business, not make your workflows clunkier. Modern insurance infrastructure means being adaptive and making constant improvements to your compliance ecosystem. Any solution that stops improving the moment the contract is signed should raise an immediate red flag.

Solutions built on mainframe code don’t offer the same flexibility as those that leverage a cloud-native architecture. They’re typically harder (or even impossible) to integrate with the other software you use for daily business operations and can cause major downtime and cost inefficiencies when you’re ready to scale your business.

4. Processing bad transactions

Some producer license management technologies have built in checks and balances to stop an invalid transaction before it happens. Others… don’t. Incomplete producer applications or license renewal forms can result in the state canceling the application, but still keeping the associated fees. Without a system that can flag a potentially bad transaction, you’re left with the risk of processing and paying for transactions that needed further human intervention before going through.

At the very least, your compliance tech should give you the option to build warnings, alerts, and “hard stops” into your workflows to keep transactions from being processed when a producer doesn’t meet certain criteria. The right compliance management solution will save your business money in the long run, not add extra (and completely avoidable) expenses to your bottom line.

Customer confession: “The notifications in our current solution are pretty lackluster, and we’re billed per transaction. Sometimes we end up paying for the same transaction multiple times even though it only went through once.”

5. Exposes you to higher security risks

The data-driven nature of the insurance business means industry players have more cybersecurity concerns than most. The success of your organization’s data security depends on the security and preparedness of any third-party vendors or software you use. If you’ve taken the necessary steps to ensure your own cyber hygiene, don’t let your compliance technology vendor take you down with their own lax security practices.

By vetting compliance technology vendors for their cybersecurity practices, you can reduce the risk of a data breach and protect your reputation. If a vendor isn’t up-to-date on their cybersecurity requirements, they’re putting you at risk, and that’s just not the recipe for a good partnership.

Avoid falling victim to technology crimes from your compliance vendor

If you’re currently working with an insurance compliance technology that isn’t treating you the way you deserve – in these ways or others! – see how AgentSync is different. AgentSync’s committed to the idea of Customer Love. This means fair and transparent pricing, support that’s actually supportive, and a tech platform that delights its users and receives regular updates and improvements.

See how different insurance compliance could be at your organization; check out an AgentSync demo today.

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