A worked example: an independent insurance agency.
This is the one-page plan a free review produces, fully worked for a typical 11-person agency. Read it as an agency owner would: if the shape of the hours below looks like your shop, your version of this page takes one hour to earn.
Where your hours are going
Eleven people in Westerville: two producers, four service staff, a commercial-leaning book on HawkSoft, quoting carrier portals one at a time. Across the service team, the week breaks down like this:
- Certificates of insurance: ~60 requests a week at 15 minutes each (industry average is 15–30 a day at 12–25 minutes) = ~15 hrs
- Renewals: ~25 a week; reading expiring vs. renewal dec pages side by side plus chasing updated payroll and driver info, ~25 minutes each = ~10 hrs
- Commercial quoting: ~5 multi-carrier submissions a week, re-keying the same risk into each portal, roughly an hour of pure re-entry each = ~5 hrs
That's roughly 30 hours a week — most of one full-time CSR — going to work a system can do while your licensed people do the parts that need a license.
Do this week — free, ~1 hour, no help needed
Turn on the IVANS connections you already have. Log into Ivans Exchange — the dashboard lists download and eDocs connections your carriers offer that were never activated. Most agencies have several sitting unused. Activate them and dec pages, renewal docs, and cancellation notices land in HawkSoft on their own instead of someone pulling them off carrier portals. Saves an hour or two a week, costs nothing, and it's already part of what you pay for.
The four that matter
| # | Recommendation | Hours/wk back | Setup | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | COI fast-path: AI drafts the cert, a human sends it | ~8 | 2 weekends | $0–30/mo |
| 2 | Renewal comparison sheets, built automatically | ~5 | 1 weekend | $0–60/mo |
| 3 | A commercial rater instead of portal-by-portal quoting | ~4 | 2–3 wks (vendor) | vendor quote, low hundreds/mo |
| 4 | Renewal chasing on autopilot in HawkSoft | ~3 | 1 weekend | $0 |
Cert requests come in by email as free text. A rule on your certs@ inbox reads the request, pulls the matching policy and holder details, and drafts the ACORD 25 in HawkSoft — then a CSR verifies the holder language against the actual endorsements and clicks send. The verification step stays human on purpose; that's where the E&O risk lives. Runs on Power Automate (already inside your Microsoft 365) plus one AI extraction step — and that step can run on a small local model on an office PC, so client data never leaves your building. "Done" looks like: a GC emails for a standard cert and it's back in five minutes, checked, with nobody rebuilding it from scratch. Build it yourself from Power Automate templates over a few weekends, or I build it in two weeks, flat fee.
Today someone reads the expiring dec page and the renewal side by side and writes up what changed. Instead: both PDFs drop into a folder, and a comparison table — limits, premium, forms added or removed — is waiting for the CSR to review. The remarket decision and how to present a rate increase stay with your people; only the reading is automated. Runs in your accounts on a zero-retention business AI tier, or fully local. Do it yourself with a weekend and an AI subscription, or I set it up as part of a sprint.
Not AI — just the biggest single hours-return available to a shop still quoting portal-by-portal. Tarmika or Semsee take one entry of the risk and quote across dozens of carriers: 45–90 minutes of re-keying becomes 3–8 minutes. This one you buy, not build — the setup is vendor onboarding and carrier appointments. My role is just to say it plainly: if you quote five commercial risks a week by hand, this pays for itself in the first month.
HawkSoft's built-in workflows — which most shops never configure — can open the renewal task at 90 days, assign it, and nudge at 60 and 30. No more someone remembering to work the expiration list. "Done" looks like: nothing renews late because nobody looked. This is configuration, not software: do it yourself with HawkSoft's docs and a free Saturday, or it rides along free with either build above.
What I'd not automate, and why
Sending certificates without a human check. A cert that promises notice-of-cancellation the policy doesn't give is a classic E&O claim. AI preps, a licensed person approves — that order never flips.
Claims files and personal-lines underwriting data. My model is simple: automations run in your systems and your accounts, and I never possess your client data. First projects stay on low-sensitivity surfaces — certs, renewals, reporting. That stance is also your answer when a carrier asks about vendor due diligence under Ohio's insurance data security law.
An AI receptionist. Clients at an 11-person agency are paying for the relationship. After-hours intake, maybe someday. Answering your phone at 2pm, no.
If you want help
The review is free and everything above works without me. If you'd rather have any of it built and running for you, that's a flat-fee engagement. Either way, I'm around.
Worked example — not a client engagement. The agency is illustrative; the benchmarks are real. Tool prices are illustrative.
Your agency's version of this page takes one hour to earn.
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