In the dynamic insurance industry, staying ahead requires a forward-thinking mindset and innovative strategies. At Applied and our family of brands, we’re excited to support independent agents in navigating this transformation.
Selecting the Right Agency Management System
Having the right agency management system (AMS) is more crucial than ever. Choosing a modern AMS can transform how you handle policies and customer interactions through the digital roundtrip of insurance. With top-notch tools like and Applied Epic® and EZLynx®, you can tap into powerful integrations and advanced automation to boost client satisfaction and accelerate your agency’s growth. By choosing a system tailored to your unique needs, you're setting the stage for incredible efficiency and scalability, ensuring your agency not only keeps up but leads the way in industry innovations.
6 Capabilities to Look For
Choosing a new agency management system can be a game-changer for your agency. There are plenty of good reasons to make this move. Whether you’re looking for a new agency management system or want to evaluate the capabilities of your current system, we encourage you to do your homework.
Here’s a checklist of what capabilities to look for to help you ensure your system aligns with the needs of your insurance agency:
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Native Rating and Submissions
Choose a system that seamlessly connects quoting and policy management workflows with natively embedded commercial and personal rating with manual submission workflows. Ensure the AMS can pre-fill quotes for remarketing and once you bind a policy, you can easily mark quotes as sold for downstream lifecycle management.
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Sales and Marketing Automation
Finding innovative ways to win new business and round out existing clients starts with the right data and target lists to market your business. Then, build a sales pipeline that works for your sales motion and look for tools that make it easy to move opportunities throughout your sales process.
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Servicing and Policy Management
Your tech stack needs to manage every stage of the policy lifecycle end-to-end – from marketing, quoting, binding, claims, payments, servicing, and back to renewals. And your agency needs to be able to automate many of these business processes to make sure your time is focused on revenue-generating activities. With a single view of your business, you can find customer quotes, policy information, claims, and documents in one organized place and easily remarket with up-to-date information synced from your daily insurance company policy downloads.
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Integrated Payments and Accounting
Elevate your back-office operations by choosing an AMS with comprehensive financial management, simplifying and automating money movement processes for you and your customers. Efficiently collect payments digitally, manage commissions, leverage back-office automation to streamline manual accounting processes.
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Agency and Book of Business Intelligence
Having data and analytics available within your system makes teams across the agency more data-driven in their daily workflows and decision-making processes.
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Modern Experiences and Accessibility
In this digital age, accessibility and modern user experiences are non-negotiable. Ensure your system is cloud-based, browser-compatible, and API-friendly, providing modern interfaces that are both intuitive and user-centric. These features are critical for keeping your agency agile, scalable, and prepared for the future.
What Else to Look for in an AMS and a Tech Partner
In addition to the tips above, you should also:
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Prioritize features that improve customer relationship management, focusing on retention, renewals, and cross-sell opportunities with your policyholders.
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Choose a partner dedicated to innovation and support to ensure your agency continues to lead and exceed expectations in the insurance business.
Get Started
Incorporating these key elements into your decision-making process will position your agency at the forefront of insurance industry innovation. If Applied Epic and EZLynx are at the top of your list, reach out to us, and we can help you get started!
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Katie O’Brien
Senior Director of Product Marketing, Applied Systems
Katie leads product marketing for Applied's global portfolio of products, driving and influencing the launch of innovative solutions in the market to enable the next generation of insurance. Her expertise and customer-oriented mindset ensure her team and broader Applied stay committed to helping stakeholders across the ecosystem leverage transformative insurtech to solve real business challenges.