Insurance Sales Performance & Incentive Compensation Management
Run an effective ICM program that meets short-term and long-term needs.
Gain confidence to solve any distribution management challenge.
A sound insurance distribution management strategy within the insurance industry encompasses a wide range of core functional requirements that go beyond those of other industries. Baseline requirements include producer onboarding, ongoing compliance validation, commission and sales compensation–based payouts, hierarchy management, and producer communication and education. These processes directly support sales performance and long-term revenue outcomes.
The underlying products supporting these requirements must function seamlessly to deliver a friction-free, transparent producer experience that instills confidence and drives loyalty across the sales team. Strong alignment between systems, processes, and governance is essential to improving performance management and ensuring consistency across insurance sales teams.
Looking back, as recently as the early 2000s, distribution management would not have been described as friction-free. Fax-based onboarding was the norm, and compensation efforts focused primarily on producing timely and accurate payments. Advances in technology have significantly improved sales performance management capabilities. Today, producers expect a simplified, paperless onboarding experience, portal-based delivery of concise statements and reports, and complete transparency into performance metrics such as persistency, growth, and new or renewal premium contribution.
Modern expectations also include visibility into payouts and access to performance tracking tools that support ongoing sales performance improvement. Additionally, carriers have recognized the importance of increasing producer service levels while also advancing innovation and sales planning. These objectives are difficult to align without the right combination of technology and operational discipline.
To summarize, producer expectations are higher than ever, and carriers must orchestrate a complex landscape of systems and vendors to support insurance sales performance management. The ability to integrate solutions, maintain data consistency, and provide meaningful sales insights plays a critical role in improving both producer experience and overall sales performance.
Technologies We Implement and Support
Varicent ICM & AgentSync
Varicent ICM is an all-industry incentive compensation solution with a proven track record in insurance sales. As a leading sales performance management software, Varicent’s flexible data model, advanced tools, and integrated workflow engine provide significant flexibility in plan design, producer and hierarchy management, and reporting and analytics.
Varicent’s core platform includes the full administration suite, as well as a producer-facing portal that delivers clear and concise views of payments, analytics, and overall performance. These capabilities support improved sales performance management and enable organizations to better align compensation programs with business goals.
Varicent’s partnership with AgentSync further enhances its position in the insurance industry by providing a fully integrated onboarding and distribution channel management platform.
Through integration and daily synchronization with NIPR, the AgentSync partnership delivers a complete, compliant, and fully integrated producer management module that supports both onboarding and ongoing performance management.
Varicent also offers additional components that add value to its ICM solution, including revenue intelligence and forecasting tools that support better visibility into revenue, as well as enhanced sales planning capabilities and a powerful integration toolset.
SAP APME / Agent Connection
APME is SAP’s flagship platform for incentive compensation in the insurance industry. APME is purpose-built for insurance and incorporates producer onboarding, producer management, and incentive compensation management within one integrated solution. This unified approach helps organizations improve sales performance while maintaining control over complex compensation programs.
APME’s insurance-focused data model provides flexible configuration tools for plan design, producer, and hierarchy management, and advanced processing capabilities. These features support consistent execution of compensation programs and improve visibility into sales performance outcomes across the organization.
SAP also offers additional components that extend the value of the platform. These include AgentConnection, which provides a producer portal and integration gateway, as well as SAP Analytics Cloud and the Business Technology Platform. Together, these tools support improved performance management, enhanced reporting, and better alignment between compensation programs and broader sales performance management strategies.
Unique Complexities of the Insurance Industry
Collect
- Multiple Source Systems
- High Volume
- Cleanliness/Accuracy
Credit
- Complex Hierarchical Distribution
- Multi-faceted Metrics
Calculate
- Policy/Holder Age Based Calcs
- High Frequency of Retro Adjustments
- Hierarchical Calc Logic
Compensate
- Earned/Unearned
- Aggregate/Policy Based Max Advance
- Automated Debt Collection Logi
Communicate
- Producer Mindshare
- Clarity/Transparency at Volume
- Workflow
- Self Service
How Do We Help
OpenSymmetry’s specialized insurance practice utilizes a foundational insurance data model that is customizable to meet the specific needs of clients. This foundational model enhances project efficiency, facilitates critical features, and enables optimized, granular reporting.
Our model merges the critical components of producer, policy, and compensation data to deliver a complete insurance solution supporting transactional and summary level compensation.
Clients From Around the Globe
“Sunrun maximized the value of our incentive compensation system, and we were able to increase overall sales volume of solar panels and batteries. We’re now able to better serve both our employees and our customers. The efficiencies generated from this new ICM system have led to an increase in deployment of solar across the United States.”
ROBERT YEAGER
Director of Compensation, Sunrun
Clients From Around the Globe
“OpenSymmetry rose to the challenge of creating a roadmap for an efficient, centralized ICM system for us. We started off with over 100 incentive plans throughout the bank in different lines of business, meaning the incentive administration was decentralized. With the help of OpenSymmetry, we have improved efficiencies by streamlining our incentive compensation administration to a single system.”
Kimberly Hinrichsen
VP & Sr. Director of Incentive Admin, U.S. Bank
Clients From Around the Globe
“After working [with OpenSymmetry], my whole world changed. From working with a huge, onerous spreadsheet system, it’s gotten simpler. It’s changed the game for everyone in the company. We have improved timelines for making information available for reps. It shifted my perspective to dig deeper into the data.”
Courtney Aubin,
Senior Sales Commissions Analyst, Blackbaud
Clients From Around the Globe
“Working with OpenSymmetry, we experienced openness, flexibility, and total commitment to our success from UK team. I was surprised that instead of coming up with solutions to fix our problems only, they were always looking for ways to simplify, streamline, and improve our processes in the same time. Due to that kind of commitment, we went from having over 100 configuration rules to just 27.”
Petra Maurova
Sales Rewards, SITA
Clients From Around the Globe
“OpenSymmetry helped us to evaluate our ICM program in a new light. Their technical and business expertise allowed us to understand the details of how changes would impact our system and processes. This enabled us to implement changes that would have the biggest impact on our business.”
Sales Operations Manager
Wacker Neuson
Clients From Around the Globe
“OpenSymmetry’s culture was a really good fit with T-Mobile. They were very open-minded and spent as much time listening and collaborating with us as they did telling us what needed to be done. That type of humility with such solid knowledge and capability was a perfect match for us.”
Clayton Tredway
Director Customer Care, T-Mobile
Clients From Around the Globe
“OpenSymmetry helped automate our data feeds and update our configuration of Xactly Incent, and these improvements helped us save approximately 7,200 hours per year by eliminating manual calculations, minimizing adjustments, and building trust in the data to reduce shadow accounting. When we got this working right, we reduced what took days to 3.5 hours. Time savings have been so key for us.”
Justin Ritchie
Senior Director of Sales Operations, Manheim (subsidiary of Cox Enterprises)
Clients From Around the Globe
“Working with OpenSymmetry, we have implemented a formal, auditable, trackable sign-off process for the payouts. It’s made a huge improvement. No more paper. Information is at associates’ fingertips 24/7. Managers can view sales results and compensation results for their teams, which leads to more effective and efficient management. The availability of information has made a huge difference.”
Jennifer Wooster
Vice President – Group Actuarial and Compensation Officer, Ameritas
Resources for Insurance
The Challenge of Legacy Platforms for Distribution Management
and Incentive Compensation in Insurance
Blog
Status Quo Must Go
The Revenue Centric Business Case
Blog
Business Case Simplified: Producer Lifecycle Management (PLCM)
Blog
Improving the Producer Experience Starts with a Strong Foundation
Whitepaper
Insurance: Agent Performance | OS & SAP
Data Sheet
OpenSymmetry and SAP bring together the best of SPM technology and consulting services to deliver transformative sales performance solutions.
Whitepaper
We highlight 5 challenges to sales incentive compensation in the insurance industry, and offer insights into how SPM solutions can help address those challenges, and more.
Sales Performance Management Implementation
Case Study
Through comprehensive planning, configuration, testing, and documentation, the deployment of The Co-operators’ new SPM technology was a success.
