How AI is Modernizing Commissions Reconciliation for Brokers
Author: Kailyn Despotakis,Head of Agency Sales│Ascend│NetVU Silver Partner
Commissions reconciliation is an expensive, time-consuming, but critical responsibility for accounting teams today. Although they are inundated with growing responsibilities, there is a significant lack of tools and support for these teams, resulting in the following challenges:
- Labor-Intensive Process: Agencies must manually fetch statements and match individual transactions line by line to resolve discrepancies, leading to inefficient use of time and a higher chance of errors.
- Delays in Closing Books: The manual reconciliation process can add weeks to an agency’s closing timeline, creating accounting bottlenecks and hindering strategic decision-making.
- Incorrect Producer Commissions: Delays in closing the books result in late or incomplete producer commissions, causing internal frustration and dissatisfaction.
Many existing solutions, such as downloading via Ivans or relying on business process outsourcing (BPO), only address some of these challenges. For example, Ivans works well when carriers are supported, but when they aren’t, agencies must still manually download and reconcile statements. Similarly, BPOs continue to rely heavily on human labor, which inevitably leads to challenges such as human error, delays in turnaround, and difficulties in managing external teams.
AI-driven solutions, on the other hand, streamline commissions reconciliation into a scalable workflow, providing full oversight and control while significantly decreasing the workload on existing teams. Key advantages of AI include:
- Scalable Processes: By leveraging technology for repetitive tasks like fetching statements, agencies can focus on growing premium without needing to expand their accounting teams.
- Flexibility: AI can read, extract, and match all types of data, eliminating the need to onboard new processes for different carriers or statement formats. This flexibility ensures agencies can quickly adapt to the ever-changing demands of their business.
- Predictive Insights: Beyond processing statements, AI learns from the data it interacts with, enabling agencies to extract complex insights, forecast revenue trends, and identify areas of opportunity.
Although there have been lofty promises about the potential impact of AI in the future, agencies are already finding real-life applications that not only alleviate the growing burden on teams but also future-proof their businesses in an increasingly competitive landscape.