Meet the Team: Angie Sinclair on Solving Legacy Tech Pain Points

We kicked off the new year getting to know Angie Sinclair, North America’s Pre-Sales Lead, a little better. She shares her experience transitioning from some of the industry’s largest carriers to INSTANDA’s no-code platform.

How did you get into the insurance industry?

Honestly, on accident. After I graduated, I was a grant writer for a public school district. I started looking for a more stable career path, and living in Des Moines, insurance was the obvious choice. I started at one of the large carriers in town working on their lawyer’s professional liability underwriting team in the MGA branch. Over time, I helped with other projects, such as upgrading their rating system, and became interested in the IT space. After that, I moved to another major insurance carrier as a Business Analyst. I added new products to and maintained other products through configurations on their policy platforms. I then became a team lead, eventually managing multiple configuration teams supporting about 30 child companies.

Why did you move to the vendor side of insurance with INSTANDA?

I came into contact with INSTANDA throughout my career on the insurer side and always loved the product. One of INSTANDA’s leaders mentioned they were looking for someone with my skillset, and I decided to take the opportunity to try something new. I loved the chance to work on a smaller, agile team that would challenge me to learn and grow. I especially loved the creative thinking that INSTANDA enables. There’s flexibility to do and try different things and our clients are hungry for change and innovation.

Having boots-on-the-ground experience at multiple large carriers, what were some everyday pain points you experienced?

One of the biggest pain points was system upgrades. We would spend six months preparing for massive upgrades with no opt-in capabilities every 12-18 months. It could take months to test, validate, and retrain teams to use the tool. Sometimes, I’m astounded by how frequently and easily INSTANDA makes updates compared to the stress of what system upgrades used to mean.

Another big pain point was document management. Putting policy packets together was incredibly complex. Just to order the documents in a policy packet, you had to memorize sort order codes and apply them to your document. We had to hire people technical enough to use the tool, and then would spend nine months to a year teaching them the tools to make policy administration system configuration or document changes. Modern no-code tools make ordering packets easy and visual with drag-and-drop interfaces, but with the legacy software we had, the process was incredibly painful.

What trends are you seeing in the industry?

I’ve talked to several underwriting companies now that are making the most of straight-through processing. This allows their underwriters to focus on the applications that really need their attention and leave the rest to the underwriting automation rules. It takes the perfect blend of automated data collection and underwriting expertise to create the underwriting rules, but once in place, this straight through processing really enables companies to grow quickly. It maximizes the knowledge your people bring to the table by taking away the extraneous information that doesn’t need their attention. It gives insurers capacity to take on more policies without increasing headcount and to spend time focusing on innovation.

Fine-tuning workflows is also an increasingly common conversation. In my last few years on the carrier side, we were just starting to talk about workflow automation and straight-through processing. But now, it’s so easy to bake in automated renewals and rules. These workflows make insurance easy for the insured; they only have to focus on a few small questions and can get a new policy or endorsement in seconds.

When you're not at your desk or traveling for conferences, what are you doing?

Mostly going to my kid’s activities: choir concerts, track meets, soccer games. When we’re not busy with the day-to-day, my family loves to go downhill skiing. I absolutely love the mountains; they’re my happy place. I also love to hike, bike ride, watch movies and read.

We'd like to say thanks to Angie for her time. If you'd like to find out more about how INSTANDA can help your business, talk to the team or try our free demo.