The roughly 100,000 independent agencies using Vertafore’s Agency Platform and AMS360 Online will have access to one more important automation tool this year. A deal announced today between Vertafore and DocuSign Inc. will bring e-signature capabilities to agents across the country, something both companies say will decrease agency cost, improve workflow and limit E&O exposure.
“We believe that by the end of the decade, all successful insurance businesses will be 100% digital,” DocuSign’s senior director of marketing, Miles Kelly, told Insurance Business. “We spend a lot of time with independent agents and as a whole, we see that agents are looking for three things: more money, the ability to process more claims, and easy-to-use electronic solutions. Vertafore shares our vision and will help us deliver.”
The deal was a quick one—just three months in the making, according to Vertafore’s senior vice president of engineering and operations, Theo Beack. However, it will benefit everyone from “the largest brokers to the smallest five-person agencies,” Beack said.
Electronic signatures do seem to benefit agency users. According to Kelly, agents who use DocuSign technology experienced a 30% reduction in claims processing time, and a transition from 30% to 50% document accuracy to 100% accuracy.
That’s vital to decreasing an agent’s errors and omissions exposure, Beack stressed.
“There is an enormous cost to agencies when the document signing process is not entirely accurate and consistent,” he said. “This technology reduces [agency] exposure substantially by making the process more streamlined, stopping an application if all digits are not where they need to be, or if a needed initial is skipped.”
Bob Childress, CEO of Florida-based Solace Insurance, echoed those sentiments in an earlier interview with Insurance Business.
“DocuSign is now widely accepted in the insurance industry, both on the personal and commercial front,” said Childress, who has been using DocuSign for roughly five years. “Having clients sign electronically cuts down on errors, time delays and mail. It’s a huge savings as well as a highly efficient way of doing business now.”
Beack said he hopes the partnership will allow Vertafore a significant share in the agency demographic, equally benefitting clients servicing personal and commercial lines accounts. The deal is slated to expire in four years, though both parties were confident the partnership would continue well past that date.
“We think this is going to be a long-lasting relationship between our respective companies,” Beack said. “This is going to be very durable; we really benefit from the respective investments each company makes.”
