The Insurance Perspectives Podcast involves contributors outside of HawkSoft. The participants' views are entirely their own and may not reflect the views of HawkSoft.
This recap of the Insurance Perspectives Podcast summarizes highlights of the two episodes about Certificial, where HawkSoft host Kenny Hendricks interviews Peter (Pete) Teresi of Certificial, and Chris Paradiso and Stephanie Fanelli of Paradiso Insurance, which uses Certificial's solution for sharing real-time certificates of insurance (COIs) with clients.
Pete, Chris, and Stephanie discuss the benefits of having a solution for real-time certificates rather than point-in-time COIs, as well as the convenience of providing a portal for clients to access their COIs and generate them for cert holders if needed.
In this article:
- Part 1: Certificial (Peter Teresi)
- Part 2: Paradiso Insurance (Chris Paradiso & Stephanie Fanelli)
Part 1: Certificial (Peter Teresi)
Watch the video podcast - Part 1
Question 1: Why does Certificial exist? What is your reason for participating in the independent agency channel?
- Pete Teresi says Certificial aims to transform legacy insurance processes that rely on email, fax, or physical documents into digital, real-time processes to improve the experience for both agencies and clients.
- Certificial means to solve the problem that insurance documents are point-in-time, while insurance coverage is ongoing. The idea is to automate insurance processes and documentation to reflect real-time insurance coverage.
- Pete started in the insurance industry by working for ACORD, which gave him opportunities to work with agents and their processes, and to see all the opportunities for automation.
- Certificial is passionate about empowering agencies of every size, rather than gating solutions behind high price tags.
- Certificial’s purpose is to supplement the agency management system and make it more efficient to verify coverages in real time. This can help bridge the gap between the carrier and the agency.
“Certificial extends the capabilities of the management system so that we can start to rely less on email and faxing and physical mailing of documents and move towards a more modern, real-time, data-driven experience for our clients and our clients’ clients. Nothing about insurance is point-in-time. So the way we transact it should not be either.”
Question 2: If you had to pick one aspect of Certificial that draws in and keeps agencies working with you, what would that be and why?
- Pete feels that in a nutshell, agencies appreciate Certificial for helping them service their clients more efficiently.
- Stephanie Fanelli agrees that Certificial has helped her agency be more efficient. With commercial clients, they can simply send them a Certificial link where they can generate their own certificates on demand.
- Chris Paradiso adds that today’s modern customer wants the ability to access the documents they need on their own terms, rather than being at the mercy of their agent.
- Pete points out that Certificial’s self-servicing capabilities also allow customers to get what they need outside of the agency’s office hours.
- Kenny Hendricks and Chris discuss how this allows agents to serve their clients in whatever way they prefer, whether it’s contacting the agency or using self-service features.
“When you think about self-servicing in this space, it's not about trying to move the task from inside the agency and pass it on to the client. It's when something is needed at 11 p.m. at night or on a weekend. You want to make sure they have that capability, but also make it simple.”
Question 3: How does Certificial approach data ownership with regard to your customers?
- Pete says Certificial considers the agent as the owner of their data. The company does everything they can to give the agency control over how that data is used, what they want displayed to clients, and what their clients can do with that data.
- Agencies are uniquely situated to understand the risk they could take on by putting too much power in the client's hands, so Certificial’s goal is to empower the agency to make the best decision for them.
- Chris stresses the importance of agents understanding what partners will do with their data. He gives an example of a national carrier that shared his agency’s data with a competitor, and he was unable to stop them as it wasn't prohibited in their contract.
- Pete mentions that Certificial has been approached by companies looking to utilize agent data, but that they always reject these opportunities because Certificial’s goal is to help agents.
- Chris feels Pete and the leadership of Certificial are ethical people with the best interests of agents at heart.
“We look at it as the agency owns the information. We keep them in the driver's seat. They are the ones that get to choose where that information goes and what their client can or cannot do with that data.”
Question 4: What is the hardest part of working with insurance agencies?
- Pete feels the most difficult thing about the insurance industry, and the reason Certificial came to be, is the difficulty of standardizing data across all clients and carriers.
- A certain amount of flexibility in how parties can provide data is good, but too much makes it difficult to fully utilize and leverage the data at scale.
- Any system, including the management system, is only as good as the data that’s put into it, which is why it’s so important to have data standards.
- Kenny asks Stephanie if the agency has had any struggles with standardizing data, and she confirms that they had to come up with standard labels for coverage types and limits so everything would map correctly to Certificial.
- Certificial has also come to the agency with suggestions and ideas on ways they could further help the agency, and Stephanie appreciates having an open dialogue for the agency to share how proposed changes could impact them.
“The most important part of our business is our clients. But it's the data that is representative of the client. So it's using that information to better serve your customer, to better understand your agency—and to be able to utilize that information, you have to have good data.”
Question 5: What is the best part of working with insurance agencies?
- Pete is most excited about the opportunities for innovation in the insurance industry. He loves solving problems with technology and seeing how it moves the needle for agencies.
- He mentions that Certificial is one of the only technology solutions for agents that does not charge the agent, and instead charges the organizations that are downstream, making them a true partner of the agent.
“I love empowering business to create technologies and actually see it come to fruition. I love seeing innovation and I love working with agencies that are helping move that needle, helping move our industry forward.”
Question 6: How does Certificial work with the HawkSoft management system?
- Pete mentions how easy it is to enable integration with Certificial by simply selecting the integration in the HawkSoft Marketplace.
- Once the agency logs in, they can see their commercial clients and select how they want to use the platform, whether it’s inviting businesses to use the portal, or only enabling certain self-service aspects.
Part 2: Paradiso Insurance (Chris Paradiso & Stephanie Fanelli)
Watch the video podcast - Part 2
In this episode:
Question 1: Tell us about your agency. How long have you been in the business, and how did you get into the business? Do you have any specializations? What gets you excited about insurance?
- Kenny introduces Chis Paradiso, owner and CEO of Paradiso Financial and Insurance Services. Chris is a well-known advocate and champion for independent agents and the industry, and his agency focuses heavily on charity work and community involvement.
- Stephanie Fanelli is VP of Commercial Lines and has been with the agency for about 15 years. She is the longest tenured employee aside from Chris, and has helped him grow the agency from the ground up.
- The agency now has over 70 employees, and has a strong commercial side including a niche program for parcel delivery.
- The agency is passionate about the client experience, and they have implemented technologies like an insured app and Certificial to make policy management easy for their clients.
- Stephanie enjoys having the opportunity to work with so many different types of clients from all industries and help them find solutions for their needs.
- Chris Paradiso is passionate about driving change in the insurance industry, especially as it pertains to improving the client experience. His hope is that tech providers, carriers, and independent agencies can come together to improve the experience for the insured.
“Carriers, agencies, and management systems need to open our eyes and become better partners for the end result. The winner is the client and we have an obligation, in my opinion, to look in the mirror, come together, work harder, and make the experience better.”
Question 2: What was your agency looking for when you first encountered Certificial?
- Chris realized that managing certificates was a costly activity for his agency because of how much work it required for staff, so he was looking for a solution to make the process more efficient and lower costs.
- Stephanie confirms that Certificial made the process significantly faster and easier for the agency by automatically finding policies that come in through download.
- Certificial also allows the agency to attach a blanket waiver of subrogation and additional insured endorsement and send it in one step, rather than creating and sending multiple documents separately. This saves about 15 minutes per COI for the staff, which adds up to many hours a week.
- Clients can also request a certificate through Certificial, which makes it faster to handle companies that require specific wording because they can request exactly what they need.
“Certificial allows us to attach the blanket waiver of subrogation and the blanket additional insured endorsement, so that when you push through that certificate, all of those documents are in one attachment. It’s one step. So it just streamlines things to make the process go a little easier for us.”
Question 3: What is your agency able to do now with Certificial that you couldn't do before?
- Stephanie shares that the agency can now send their clients a link to Certificial that includes every COI the agency has made for them, so the client has permanent access to all COIs in one easy place.
- As mentioned earlier, clients can also create a Certificial login where they can generate their own basic certificates outside of office hours if needed.
- Chris emphasizes how much time it saves the agency to give the client access to their COIs and how it better serves the client as well, creating a win-win situation.
- Pete has seen agencies who had clients that were more expensive to service than they were to drop as clients, due to their intensive COI needs. Certificial automates much of that manual labor, making it more profitable to keep these clients.
- Certificial also allows the agent to revoke documents that are no longer relevant, which reduces E&O risk greatly compared to PDF documents, where client may retain outdated versions after a change is made.
“We sent clients a link with every certificate they have on file and said, here are all of your certificates for the upcoming year. That was received so well by so many of our clients because they now have that access themselves and they don't need to wait for us to answer an email or pick up the phone.”
Question 4: What is one thing that you would change about Certificial if you could?
- Stephanie feels the only part of the process where she has experienced difficulties is getting the data to map correctly to Certificial when carriers send things in non-standard formats, but she understands the inherent difficulties here and feels it only affects a very small percentage of COIs.
- Pete acknowledges that with data mapping, it’s a challenge to balance allowing enough flexibility of data without exposing risk and incorrect use of the system.
- Chris agrees that data standardization is one of the biggest problems in the insurance industry, especially where downloads are concerned, as carriers send data in a wide variety of formats.
- Chris appreciates Certificial’s willingness to work with their agency and understand their obstacles.
“A constant challenge on our end is, how much of a battle do you want to fight with data standardization. It's a balancing act. We can’t make the standards too narrow because it becomes too limiting, but we can’t have it be the Wild West either, because then the data isn’t usable for the agency.”
Question 5: How would you describe the value that Certificial brings to your agency?
- Stephanie and Chris emphasize the value of Certificial making the COI process faster for the agency while providing 24/7 access to COIs for clients.
- Chris points out that because Certificial has no cost for agencies, there’s no reason for an agency not to try it.
- Chris thanks tech companies like Certificial and HawkSoft for listening to the needs of agents and being committed to solving their problems.
“The technology that's winning has leaders that are sitting in our seats and understanding our pain points. HawkSoft listens to agents. They solve problems. I am thankful every day for HawkSoft listening to agents and bettering the tech and partnering with people like Peter and Certificial, which is hugely important to us agents winning.”
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