How Braly Insurance Group Modernized Payments with Ascend

Founded in 1997, Braly Insurance Group is an independent insurance agency based in McKinney, Texas, helping individuals and businesses navigate the complexities of insurance with confidence.

For nearly three decades, Braly has built its business around a highly personalized, education-first approach. Combining deep insurance expertise with a strong commitment to client service, Braly aims to give clients not only the right coverage, but greater confidence and clarity throughout the insurance process.

That same client-first philosophy extends to the agency’s technology strategy. As Braly has grown and expanded into more sophisticated client segments, the team has invested in modern tools that make insurance easier to purchase, manage, and pay for.

As Braly Insurance looked to grow, the agency saw an opportunity to rethink payments as more than a back-office function. Property commissions had declined by almost 50% over the past few years, creating pressure to identify new sources of revenue while continuing to deliver a high-quality client experience.

Before Ascend, Braly's payment and premium financing workflows required significant manual coordination. When financing policies, the team could find itself waiting for funds from the bookkeeper, creating a lag between the client’s decision and completed payment. Braly also had concerns about cancellations, collections, and the potential financial exposure associated with agency-billed policies.

The need for an agency bill solution became even more important as Braly expanded into new client segments. The agency partnered with a major MSP association on a pilot involving 770 businesses, creating an opportunity to provide members with specialized, branded financing options. At the same time, other clients were rapidly expanding through acquisitions, creating more complex requirements around invoicing.

Braly needed a solution capable of supporting that complexity without adding more manual work.

Braly implemented Ascend to create a more modern, centralized experience for insurance payments and premium financing. Moving eligible policies to agency bill and giving clients the option to finance also added more payment flexibility for clients.

Rather than relying on disconnected workflows between clients, the agency, carriers, bookkeepers, and financing providers, Ascend gave Braly a streamlined way to offer clients payment options and financing through one experience.

For Braly, Ascend became the “one-stop shop” for simplifying how clients pay for insurance.

With Ascend, Braly could:

• Give clients a streamlined digital checkout experience
• Offer premium financing directly within the payment flow
• Enable automatic payments for clients
• Reduce manual handling of sensitive payment information
• Create opportunities for incremental revenue through financing
• Support more sophisticated billing and financing needs as the agency grows

Maintaining a Seamless Experience Through an AMS Transition

During its partnership with Ascend, Braly also made a major technology change, transitioning its agency management system from EZLynx to Momentum AMP. Rather than disrupting the payments workflow Braly had already built, the agency was able to extend its Ascend setup by adding the Momentum integration. This allowed Braly to maintain a connected payments and financing experience as its underlying technology stack evolved—giving the team the flexibility to modernize its core systems without sacrificing the efficiencies it had gained with Ascend.

For a lean, growing agency, that flexibility has been particularly valuable. Ascend could evolve alongside Braly’s technology strategy, allowing the agency to continue simplifying payments and premium financing while taking advantage of its new AMS.

Over three years with Ascend, Braly has turned payments and financing into a highly adopted part of its client experience.

75% faster time to checkout

Before Ascend, Braly clients took an average of 20 days to complete checkout. With Ascend, that has fallen to <5 days on average—a 75% reduction in time to checkout.

By accelerating the path from invoice to payment, Braly has created a faster, more streamlined experience for clients while reducing the amount of time its team spends waiting on payments.

88% of clients enrolled in AutoPay

With 88% of clients enrolled in AutoPay, recurring payments require less manual intervention from both Braly and its clients. High AutoPay adoption gives the agency a more predictable payment workflow while creating a simpler experience for policyholders.

64% of programs financed

Perhaps most significantly, 64% of all Braly programs processed through Ascend have been financed. That level of adoption demonstrates that premium financing has become a core payment option for Braly's clients—not an edge-case workflow.

Together, the results demonstrate how Braly has used Ascend to make payments easier for clients while building a more scalable model for its team.