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SageSure Insurance Managers Improved Competitiveness by Consolidating Payments to a Single Digital Platform

Jennifer Overhulse | October 04, 2019

In insurance, speed-to-market is key to besting the competition, but it’s not all about being fast.
Insurance organizations today must also compete on price, product features or relevance, and
service. SageSure Insurance Managers (SageSure), an independent residential property
managing general underwriter (MGU), thrives on developing competitively priced products for
its highly rated insurance company partners. Delivering those products keeps SageSure focused
on staying nimble, maximizing customer satisfaction, and promoting ongoing operational
efficiency.

Terrence McLean, SageSure’s co-founder and CEO, understood that his company’s processes
and systems had to evolve to keep up with managing operations for nearly 250,000 customers,
40+ insurance products across 14 states, and a growing network of insurance agents and
brokers. McLean and his team identified an opportunity to further develop SageSure’s payment
strategy to ensure it is as quick, easy, and transparent as possible for policyholders to make
payments on policies.

Comprehensive internal analyses also uncovered three main areas contributing to unnecessary
operational and administrative expenses in the company’s existing payment strategy:
1. Disparate technologies: SageSure had multiple vendors and processes, creating
numerous vendor management challenges.
2. Inefficient financial reporting: The company was burdened with disjointed reporting and
reconciliation, resulting in significant time spent pulling and reconciling transactions.
3. Rising costs: SageSure was feeling the pain of growing credit card processing costs and
other steadily rising expenses.

“Our issues around payments compounded as our business grew,” says McLean. “We continued
adding new insurance company partners and increasing our product portfolio to serve more
customers.”

As SageSure began to search for a digital payment solution, there were three criteria deemed
non-negotiable for a new provider partner. First, SageSure wanted a reliable technology partner
with the right capabilities and expertise to help consolidate to a single payment platform.
Specifically, they were looking to create a better workflow and eliminate errors, such as
incorrect merchant IDs.

Second, SageSure needed a solution that would streamline reporting capabilities for finance
and accounting. With multiple systems, it was a heavy lift to ensure the company always had
the most up-to-date, accurate information. McLean and his team knew a cleaner, simpler
process would save both time and money.

Third, SageSure was looking for a way to mitigate rising credit card processing costs. It was
essential to keep costs low to maintain competitively priced products.
SageSure ultimately selected the One Inc Digital Payments Platform based on the strength of
the solution’s technology foundation, the company’s strong insurance industry reputation, and
the cultural fit between the two companies. One Inc completed the SageSure implementation
in less than five months, from start to finish.

“With guidance from One Inc, we created three initial implementation phases,” says McLean.
“Phase One incorporated an API for new business, Phase Two addressed an API for existing
business, and Phase Three introduced payment modals. The One Inc team made the process
easy for us. They were knowledgeable, responsive, and met key deadlines throughout each
phase of the project.”

By hitting go-live on time and on budget, SageSure was quickly able to reap the benefits of
moving to a single payment platform, improving the policyholders’ payment experiences while
enjoying a measurable return on investment (ROI). And, by automating much of the payment
process, the company eliminated costly manual errors and streamlined internal workflows by
consolidating processes.

“While we did have software and capability improvements, the benefits were multi-faceted and
seen right away with the ease of reconciliation and the simplification for our customer service
representative (CSRs) when taking payments using only one vendor,” says McLean.
Additionally, One Inc worked to uphold SageSure’s strategic goal around providing the best
prices to customers.

“SageSure believes in keeping costs low to keep premiums low,” says McLean. “Given the high
cost of credit cards, SageSure is happy to be working with One Inc to provide our customers
with the option to pay with credit cards while keeping the cost of doing so to a minimum.”

Throughout the process, McLean and the team at SageSure were impressed with One Inc’s
ability to create a true partnership and solve specific business needs with a combination of
modern technology and insurance expertise.


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