Positioning Carriers, MGAs, and Agencies for Growth by Augmenting Accounting & Finance Teams with InsurePay Reconciliation
For a period of 10 years, operating expenses consumed 25% of every premium dollar.
– KPMG & ACORD Operational Excellence in Insurance Study
Inflation, rising claims expenses, and higher reinsurance rates are just some of the reasons why carriers and MGAs are looking to drive down operational costs.
Over the last three years, insurers have successfully reduced expenses by digitizing inbound and outbound payments to reduce the costs associated with issuing and processing paper checks.
Another area ripe for disruption is reconciliations. The legacy reconciliation workflow involves agents printing a report (usually related to hundreds of policies and payments) from their agency management systems, stapling a check to the report, and mailing it to their insurance carrier.
For carriers to properly apply and reconcile lump sum payments across hundreds of policies, their finance teams must review multiple statements (often in various formats) and toggle back and forth between their billing and banking systems to ensure everything matches up.
Synchronizing Data Between Policyholders, Agents, MGAs and Carriers
One of the biggest challenges with reconciliations is that policyholder data moves separately from payment data. InsurePay digitizes this process to synchronize data between policyholders, agents, MGAs, and carriers.
InsurePay Reconciliation fits seamlessly into the agent workflow. All an agent needs to do is enter a new transaction into their AMS system. Next, InsurePay receives a transmission identifying who paid, how much, payment date, and policy remittance information.
After that, InsurePay will automatically alert approvers at an agency about a new payment transaction. Once approved, InsurePay emails a payment notification to a carrier, providing secure access to remittance reporting.
The best part about InsurePay’s Reconciliation solution is that it eliminates administrative tasks for agents, such as:
- Manually gathering approvals
- Issuing and processing paper checks
- Sending emails and remittance advice to carriers
- Uploading ACH files
For carriers, InsurePay simplifies reconciliations by taking a highly manual workflow and digitizing it. For example, carriers will receive payments via direct deposit that exactly match the amounts received in their email notifications from InsurePay.
However, the most significant benefit for carriers is the standardization of remittance information and assurance of a matching payment. This allows for automatic reconciliation against a carrier’s records, eliminating the need for accounting to manually review remittance data.
Automate Your Reconciliation Workflow in 10 Days with InsurePay’s Duck Creek Accelerator
Augmenting your staff by automating parts of your reconciliation workflow doesn’t mean you must tie up valuable IT resources.
Duck Creek’s Anywhere Enabled Integration (AEI) does all the heavy lifting to decrease IT’s workload by 80%. For agents, all they need is about 30 minutes to one hour of IT involvement, and for carriers and MGAs, they can be up and running within seven to 10 days!
Duck Creek’s AEI with InsurePay offers carriers, agencies, and MGAs the following options:
Better option: Automated for Agencies, Manual for Carriers
Agents send all policyholder and payment information to carriers in a standardized format (e.g., Excel, CSV). Carriers can access this information via InsurePay’s web application. This process standardizes all payment and reconciliation data so carriers can import this information into Duck Creek’s billing system.
Best option: Full Automation for Agents, MGAs, and Carriers
All policyholder and payment data is driven from an AMS system into Duck Creek’s billing platform. Agents, MGAs, and carriers receive standardized email confirmations and reports. All payment discrepancies are automatically flagged for human intervention.
Overcoming the P&C Talent Crisis
InsurePay works with 560+ carriers, MGAs, and agencies of all shapes and sizes. This diverse customer base enables us to gain unique insights into the latest P&C trends.
One development we’ve seen in 2023 is smaller carriers losing institutional knowledge due to staff retirements. Currently, replacing talent for insurers is getting tougher because there are more open jobs than applicants in P&C insurance.
Today’s insurers are not only competing against themselves but also against TPAs and Insurtech startups for talent. According to an Aon & Ward Group Study, 65% of P&C insurance companies added staff from July 2022 – July 20231.
This is why smaller carriers are getting ahead of the curve by providing their employees with the latest technology. Some of the benefits of augmenting your accounting and finance teams with a modern reconciliation solution include:
In addition to the benefits listed above, another advantage of InsurePay’s Reconciliation solution is that it allows insurers to adapt to market changes by scaling their operations without increasing back-office expenses.
InsurePay has been helping carriers, agencies, and MGAs for 20 years to successfully implement reconciliation, billing, claims, and payment solutions. To schedule a 30-minute, no-obligation consultation, contact sales@insurepay.com.
For additional information about Duck Creek’s AEI with InsurePay, watch our video or visit https://insurepay.com/duckcreek-reconciliation/.
