How Insurance Agency Automation Helps Eliminate Data Re-Entry

Re-entering data across disconnected systems wastes hours every day for agencies. Whether it’s AMS or CRMs, or raters and carrier portals, each manual touchpoint is a risk – for delays, for duplication, and for simple errors. Where there are these inefficiencies, underwriting kickbacks, compliance risk exposure, and staff frustration multiply. A unified, managed, and above all, simplified workflow that helps keep your agency data synchronized with little to no re-keying not only returns valuable time to your producers but also helps your agency work efficiently and effectively.

Managed workflows insurance platforms like bolt Solutions help to reduce manual re-keying and keep errors to a minimum. If your agency is battling with fragmented tools and inefficient workflows, automating and centralizing information with technological tools helps take the repetitive, productivity-draining tasks off your producers’ shoulders and return them to the heart of your business.

Key Takeaways

• Manual data re-entry over fragmented systems makes for errors that slow quoting times and frustrate customers and producers.
• This creates lost productivity and even compliance issues, rooted in a lack of data flow and too many potential error points.
• However, managed workflows for insurance, with bi-directional synchronization, ensure minimal data re-entry and better flow.
• bolt Solutions simplifies agency operations with its API-first integration hub, dynamic quoting, and automated workflows to turn manual processes into unified, high-performing systems.

The Hidden Costs of Siloed Systems

Most agencies are still working with multiple disconnected platforms. AMS/CRM integration is still relatively novel, let alone when rating tools and carrier portals are added to the mix.

When these systems don’t communicate, producers are forced into a rather tedious cycle. Enter data in the CRM. Re-enter it in the AMS. Type it out once again for the rater, and then manually copy that information into each and every carrier portal they need to interact with. It’s exhausting to even read, yet accepted as part of the job.

Now, consider that even in the largest commercial lines insurers, 30% to 40% of their time is spent on administrative tasks. These repetitive tasks are costly, not just in actual revenue, but in the additional strain on producers. 

Some emerging research suggests just over half of frontline insurance staff are suffering from burnout, with 87% noting workload increases. Insurance agency automation offers a way to relieve some of these stresses and improve revenue along the way. 

The risk of error increases with every manual touchpoint, with even minor data discrepancies often triggering underwriting kickbacks that delay quotes and frustrate your customers. Looking at the bigger picture, these errors also create compliance exposure, and can damage the credibility of your agency.

In short, when insurance data consistency is compromised, agencies lose opportunities and revenue. They also lose productivity, spending time that could be spent closing new business in retyping the same information and correcting mistakes. This slows quoting and reduces sales capacity, limiting growth for agencies that could otherwise scale efficiently. 

Agencies that fail to eliminate data re-entry face a perfect storm of frustration. This leads to low morale in frontline staff and increases the risk of losing their best people to competitors. They also face unhappy customers, lower business volumes complicated by errors, and regulatory and compliance issues. 

Eliminating Data Re-Entry With Insurance Agency Automation

Before agencies can eliminate data re-entry, they need to pinpoint where it occurs – and why. 

Common culprits include AMS updates, CRM entries, quoting systems, and carrier portals. Mostly, it is driven by systems that can’t share data or rely on now-outdated integrations that push information in one direction only, rather than truly synchronizing. 

Mapping these touchpoints is your first step towards true insurance agency automation. A common rule of thumb in the industry is that a single commercial lines quote could require data entry over six systems before reaching a carrier. In reality, it will vary based on processes and capacity, but it’s a useful mental picture of the issue at hand. Every entry point introduces error risk and eats time, wasting the agent or producer’s capacity. 

Implementing Managed Workflows for Insurance

Managed workflows insurance solutions help to automate that data movement between systems. Additionally, tools like dynamic data enrichment and smart pre-fill technology help agents auto-populate applications using information already captured in the workflow. In other words, producers enter data once, and technology automatically centralizes customer records and synchronizes those changes automatically across all systems. 

These automated hand-offs between quoting, binding, and servicing ensure insurance data consistency and accelerated processing time, while keeping errors to a minimum. 

Integrating AMS, CRM, and Quoting Platforms

However, effective AMS/CRM integration needs more than just simple data exports and imports. API-first platforms use a modular approach that helps to connect even some legacy tools easily, and keep data flow bi-directional. In short, creating a “single source of truth” for the agency, with every system showing current, accurate information.

With this approach, manual uploads, exports, and spreadsheet-based workarounds (all notorious sources of error) can be eliminated. Instead, systems communicate in real time, with complete information accessible regardless of the specific platform. This is essential for eliminating re-keying at scale within insurance agencies. 

Monitoring Performance for Insurance Data Consistency

Naturally, it isn’t enough to just deploy insurance agency automation and leave it there. Agencies should track their data integrity and workflow completion across both users and offices to ensure the solutions are delivering. 

Here, dashboards and predictive analytics can help identify bottlenecks due to manual tasks, despite automation efforts. From this information, you can continuously refine your insurance agency automation tools based on real data and usage patterns, not just assumptions. This also helps support accountability among staff, and lets you identify areas where further training or support is needed. 

While switching to managed workflows in insurance may seem intimidating, it pays off. McKinsey and Company data suggests that insurers using insurance agency automation have seen a 10%–20% improvement in success and conversion rates, a 10%–15% increase in premium growth, and 20%–40% cost reduction. They’ve also seen a 3%–5% accuracy improvement in claims. That’s scale, revenue, and growth potential no agency should be ignoring in a hard market. 

Monitoring Performance for Insurance Data Consistency

Bolt Solutions helps agencies eliminate data re-entry with purpose-built tools for simpler insurance agency automation: 

• The Integration Hub uses API-first architecture to connect your AMS, CRM, telephony, and marketing systems into one managed workflow for insurance. This allows the bi-directional data flow that is key to removing manual data entry across platforms.
• The bolt Solutions native CRM offers centralized and audit-ready customer records to facilitate insurance data consistency and eliminate double entries through one authoritative platform that syncs automatically with other tools. 
• The bolt Dynamic Quoting Questionnaire pre-fills and auto-populates fields based on existing data, shrinking quote time and reducing missing field errors for true AMS/CRM integration and more accurate quoting and underwriting. 
• Case Manager Sync and E-Signature, meanwhile, ensure post-bind documentation does not require intervention, keeping data flow across stages seamless.

Together, bolt Solutions offers a comprehensive solution that takes your fragmented processes and transforms them into coordinated and managed workflows insurance agencies can rely on. 

Get Started with Insurance Workflow Automation Today

If you’re ready to eliminate data re-entry in your agency and reap the rewards, start with a systematic audit of your existing tools and processes. This will identify not only where re-entry occurs, but also help you quantify the time invested in manual and duplicate data entry. This baseline will help you demonstrate the opportunity cost and shape your technology investments. 

Next, look for tools like bolt Solutions that can bring together AMS, CRM, rater, and carrier tools in a single managed workflow. Make sure bi-directional synchronization and API-first connectivity are on offer. Don’t neglect tools – like dynamic pre-fill – that eliminate manual typing during quoting. Then, make certain to monitor implemented insurance agency automation workflows, keeping standardized processes across all users.

Of course, the time you save through insurance agency automation should not be wasted. Make sure to reinvest your saved time into client outreach and revenue growth to reap the rewards. 

Manual re-keying isn’t just a waste of time. It creates risk, costs revenue, and frustrates your team. With managed workflows for insurance agencies, you can say goodbye to tedious duplication while improving your accuracy, and refocus your producers on what matters most: selling. 
Agencies using bolt’s automation tools have seen faster quoting and improved accuracy through prefill and data enrichment capabilities. If you’re ready to discover how bolt helps agencies eliminate re-keying and streamlines every workflow, schedule a demo, and see how insurance agency automation keeps your data consistent and your producers selling.