7 Producer Management Web Service / Producer Onboarding Web Service

The Producer Management Web Service and Producer Onboarding Web Service allow a carrier system to contact Producer Express and initiate a transaction that can change a producer's record or process regulatory transactions. The web service request specifies a transaction type, which will perform one or more of the following actions depending on configuration:

• Create or update a producer record
• Send invitation to agent to complete onboarding documents
• Reconcile a producer record with the National Producer Database (PDB)
• Send appointment or termination requests
• Generate letters

These services enable carriers to skip directly to the agent interview portion of an onboarding transaction, or to automatically process compliance tasks based on sales events that occur in business systems. Transactions that need to be reviewed by a specialist are sent to an exception queue in the application for review and further processing by a licensing analyst.

Sample Use Scenario #1—Integrated Just-In-Time Support
A new producer is added to a carrier's existing distribution management platform. Although just-in-time (JIT) policies do not require appointments, licensing credentials need to be retrieved from a trusted data source and verified. A call to the Producer Onboarding Web Service can be configured to add the producer record to Producer Express and perform a PDB data reconciliation to retrieve clean data from the state source. After the reconciliation is complete, a producer sales authorization will verify that the right licenses and lines of authority are active on the producer's record so that when new business is submitted, the appointments are ready to be sent to the state. The fresh producer data is added to the Outbound Data Feed (OBDF) so that data warehouses can be updated with a new copy of the producer data.

At some point in the future, the producer submits business. The carrier's policy administration system makes a call to the Producer Authorization Web Service to find out if the agent is authorized to allow this policy application to continue. After reconciling the producer record with the PDB, the Vertafore authorization engine determines that this agent is not appointed, which is expected in a JIT state.

Instead of rejecting the request or sending a message to a licensing analyst, the authorization engine automatically requests the appointments needed to sell this type of insurance in this state. After obtaining appointment verification from the state, the sales authorization answer for this agent is now "yes." The carrier's policy administration system can continue processing the policy application without the need for a licensing analyst to get involved

Sample Use Scenario #2—Self Service Onboarding via Carrier Portal
An agent is accessing a carrier's agent portal to look at product information. The producer needs to get authorized for a new product that she hasn't sold before, or perhaps in a new state. The carrier places a widget in the portal to allow a user to self-select the necessary onboarding transaction. Upon submission, the carrier makes a request to the Producer Onboarding web service to initiate the transaction, which sends the agent instructions for completing and signing the onboarding transaction. After signature, the transaction follows the carrier's back-office onboarding workflow steps.

Sample Use Scenario #3—Initiate Onboarding via a CRM system
A recruiter is using a well-known Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to identify potential new agents. When getting to the point in the process where she is ready to contract with a new recruit, the recruiter pushesa button to "initiate contracting". The button is configured to call the Producer Onboarding Web Service and initiate an onboarding transaction. All information about the agent that has already been gathered during the CRM process is sent to Vertafore so that the agent does not need to re-enter the data. An invitation is sent to the agent with instructions for completing and signing the onboarding transaction. After signature, the transaction follows the carrier's back-office onboarding workflow steps.