Ascend helps IIANC agencies cut time spent on agency bill in half
In time spent following up on payments
No more mailing invoices, waiting for checks to be received
For financed and non-financed policies
About Alliance Insurance Services and G.R. Little Agency
Opened in 2004, Alliance Insurance Services started with a single office in Winston-Salem and now has expanded to 5 offices in North Carolina. Today, it protects people and communities all along the East Coast from the Finger Lakes of New York state to the sunny shores of central Florida.
For over a century, G.R. Little Agency has conducted its insurance business independently, writing solutions for clients throughout northeastern North Carolina, the Outer Banks. With offices in Kitty Hawk and Elizabeth City, it currently is expanding to offer solutions throughout the United States.
Challenges
Both Alliance Insurance Services and G.R. Little Agency were spending a lot of time waiting for invoices from clients to be paid (whether electronically or via check). On top of this, they were managing extra steps whenever clients wanted to finance and then their bookkeepers would need to confirm and pay the correct amounts going out to carriers. All these steps slowed down reconciliation as well as ate up a lot of time from staff to track down payments.
Brian Leftwich
Chief Operations Officer, Alliance Insurance Services
Solution
Ascend was integrated as a software solution to automate many of the back and forth tasks that occur during invoicing, payments, and accounting in the agency bill process. The platform also sends all follow-up and payment reminders as well as provides a single workflow for paid-in-full or premium financing options, taking this work off account managers' plates.
Results
By consolidating into one vendor, both agencies were able to see a significant reduction in time spent by account managers following up on payments. By also making the payments experience easier for their insureds, they’ve been able to move clients over to fully digital payments - meaning no more waiting for checks to arrive in their mailbox.
They were also able to generate additional revenue by easily offering premium financing across all policies without any extra work. With everything under one roof, there is real-time transparency about agency commissions, carrier payables, and statuses of all policies.
Katie Gray
Commercial Lines Account Analyst, G.R. Little Agency
