This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.
Insurance compliance is serious business. Failure to comply can have real consequences for everyone from insurers, carriers, MGAs, and MGUs, to individual producers, adjusters, and dual-licensed broker-dealers.
Who you choose to work with to suit your needs is important. Choosing the right technology partner can transform your insurance license compliance processes from a nightmare to a dream come true.
Choosing the wrong partner, on the other hand, can lead to undesirable consequences, such as:
- Spending a lot of money on something that doesn't meet your needs
- Compliance risks and data security flaws
- Failure to achieve organization-wide adoption and continued use of manual and flawed processes
- Losing employees and distribution channel partners because of how frustrating it is to work with – or with –
While the industry encourages insurance businesses to adopt modern practices, many insurance compliance technology vendors have no qualms about doing business the way they always have. Often, this involves making serious “cases” against their customers. No, we're not talking about the kinds of crimes that land anyone in jail, but these violations are frustrating, expensive, and just plain wrong.
In this three-part series, we'll cover the most common “lawsuits” we see insurance compliance technology vendors making against their client base. We have already attracted various types of financial crimes and supporting crimes. In this third and final installment, we look at technological crime. If you've been a victim of any of these tech-related crimes, then we're sorry to say it, but the seller you've invested your money and resources in is a total jerk.
When insurance compliance vendors commit technical crimes
You may be able to justify crimes that cost your business more money or even those that create friction in your user experience, but if the technology itself doesn't work, then what are you really getting out of your compliance technology spend? Investing your time, energy, and money in a solution that doesn't produce benefits is beyond frustrating. It can have a negative impact on all aspects 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 common mistakes:
1. Dirty and outdated data
Making good business decisions depends largely on your access to good data. The quality of your data is at the heart of whether your compliance management solution benefits you or just costs you. Whether it's due to technical errors that allow missing or incorrect data into your system, or periodic synchronization with your data source, inaccurate manufacturer and repairer licensing and appointment data will cause problems for every part of your business.
Insurance compliance standards and regulations are constantly changing and being updated. If the solution you specifically sought out to help you keep up with these things doesn't provide you with accurate and complete data, you may still be doing things manually. While many compliance tools on the market these days sync to a single source of industry truth for manufacturer information, remember that not all syncs are created equal. Consider how often synchronization occurs, the quality of data received, and how discrepancies are handled.
Customer confession: “We find that the PDB synchronization of our current solution is not possible. There is this ongoing error that they seem to be fighting and the information available about the product seems to be accurate.”
2. It still needs spreadsheets
Some insurance businesses tolerate technical crimes such as bad or outdated data and compensate them by keeping internal spreadsheets to double-check the data in their system. This is possibly the biggest technology crime of all!
You probably looked for a compliance vendor in the first place because you wanted to replace spreadsheets with a modern technology solution. So why wait for a “solution” that brings you back to square one? No organization should pay for technology that is so unreliable that employees are required to maintain their records and continue to check for accuracy. Talk about defeating the entire purpose of digitization.
Customer confession: “We often need copies of licenses. I can't find that in the product, so I keep copies of the licenses in another program.”
3. Old, siled technology
Your technology stack should create efficiencies that help modernize your business, not obfuscate your workflow. A modern insurance infrastructure means adapting and making continuous improvements to your compliance ecosystem. Any solution that stops developing when the contract is signed should immediately raise a red flag.
Solutions built on mainframe code do not offer the same flexibility as those that leverage cloud-native architecture. It's often difficult (or impossible) to integrate with other software you use for day-to-day business operations and can cause significant inefficiencies and cost inefficiencies when you're ready to scale your business.
4. Bad transaction processing
Some manufacturer license management technologies build in checks and balances to stop illegal activity before it happens. Some… don't. Incomplete manufacturer applications or license renewal forms may result in the state canceling the application, but still retaining the associated fees. Without a system that flags potentially bad jobs, you're left with the risk of processing and paying for jobs that required human intervention before they were done.
At the very least, your compliance technology should give you the option to build alerts, warnings, and “hard stops” into your workflow to prevent transactions from being processed if the processor doesn't meet certain criteria. The right compliance management solution will save your business money in the long run, without adding additional (and completely avoidable) costs to your bottom line.
Customer confession: “Notifications in our current solution are very lacking, and we are billed per transaction. Sometimes we end up paying for the same job multiple times even though it only happened once.”
5. It exposes you to high security risks
The data-driven nature of the insurance business means that industry players have more cybersecurity concerns than most. The success of your organization's data security depends on the security and integrity of any third-party vendors or software you use. If you've taken the necessary steps to ensure your online sanity, don't let your compliance technology vendor bring you down with their lax security practices.
By evaluating 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 with their cybersecurity needs, they're taking a risk, and that's just not a recipe for a good partnership.
Avoid becoming a victim of technology crime from your compliance vendor
If you're currently working with insurance compliance technology that isn't treating you right – in one way or another! – see how AgentSync is different. AgentSync is committed to the concept of Customer Love. This means fair and transparent pricing, really supportive support, and a technical platform that pleases its users and receives regular updates and improvements.
See how insurance compliance can be different for your organization; check out the AgentSync demo today.
Articles
Fraud Tech
Source link
