This Founder Is Shaking Up the Insurance Industry. The Secret? Flexibility and Speed.

The insurance industry is undergoing a big transformation. From implementing artificial intelligence to better-determining risk profiles to digitizing the customer experience via mobile, a once predictable industry is no longer. One CTO is riding this new wave of transformation by focusing on agent efficiency through a differentiated experience – and is seeing noticeable results. 

CTO and Co-Founder of AgentSync Jenn Knight took her company to a $1.2B valuation by automating and simplifying the complexity of insurance compliance. Knight is an engineer by trade, and she picked up valuable skills throughout her career that led to a billion-dollar business. Knight shares her startup advice, insights, and her team’s decisions that are helping transform the insurance ecosystem.

Don’t be afraid to change your original plans. 

There can be fear around doing something incorrectly, especially when you’re in the technical design or build stage of your application. In the early days of AgentSync, Knight imagined a self-serve product targeting insurance agencies of up to 300 agents, with a goal of one day making $1 million in revenue. Based on that definition of success, some design principles were implemented to make the application self-service. After realizing that wouldn’t work, Knight started to shift gears and change her original plan. “The initial design that I had was not the one that was going to bring us into the next part of the market,” said Knight.

Quality in = quality out. 

Knight believes that happier agents sell more and sell faster in an industry that’s going through a lot of transformation. “Differentiating your agent experience is a big deal right now,” said Knight. It’s a reality that these companies have scaled data challenges, so investing in high-integrity, high-quality data related to onboarding will have a positive effect across your ecosystem. As a result, AgentSync customers are having an easier time managing their regulatory risk, giving them more time to scale.

Flexibility and speed are key for new companies. 

The insurance industry comes with a lot of data security needs. Being able to build on a platform with the trust and backing of Salesforce was important to Knight from day one. Salesforce is the infrastructure where their data is stored, complete with out-of-the-box controls with a multilayer security approach. Because AgentSync is built on Salesforce, Knight could say to one large carrier, “We’re a new company, but we can support your SSO (Single Sign-On).” Flexibility in terms of A/B testing and speed to delivery was key in being trustworthy as a new company.

Not every customer is the same. Build your product to reflect that. 

AgentSync is successful by offering a customizable solution without getting in the way of future innovations. By building on a flexible platform like Salesforce, AgentSync created a product that allows all users to take similar steps. The outcome? They can take them in whichever order they want. By having key built-in capabilities, customers are able to execute however they need.

To keep up with a transforming industry, Knight knows there won’t always be a straight path to success. What got AgentSync to its billion-dollar valuation is sure to help keep them ahead of the competition – flexibility. In today’s ever-changing world, it’s the one constant that your company can maintain.