Applied Systems | Safeguarding & Protecting | Taylor Rhodes

Innovation across the Applied Digital Agency portfolio includes:

Business Intelligence

The latest innovations to Epic Dashboards since its July 2024 general release further democratize access to the mountain of data in Applied Epic®, transforming it into easy-to-understand graphs and charts for more roles across the agency to understand business productivity and performance trends.

Custom Dashboards User Security: Admin users can easily modify or remove access to custom dashboards and ensure the right people have access to the right reports. 

Risk Maps: Staff can gain additional context as to where customers’ risks are geographically located to help plan customer visits and inform marketing decisions like events.

Embedded Account Links: Direct links from Epic Dashboards into specific areas of a client’s account, like Opportunities, Policies, and Activities, help staff quickly take the next action based on what the data is telling them to do.

In-Dashboard Data Explanations: The data source and analysis calculation is indicated for each dashboard to give users confidence in the integrity and accuracy of the data.

Connected Commercial Lines

The latest enhancements to Applied commercial lines workflows improve connectivity across the Applied Epic ecosystem, eliminating manual, repetitive tasks, particularly as they relate to time-consuming renewals.  

Commercial Submissions Activities Sync: Submission activities from the Indio® store are activity notes on an account in Applied Epic, preventing the need to check multiple systems and rekey submissions data.

Streamlined Certificate Holder Management: During renewals, updated certificate holder information can be captured from insureds using Indio and then automatically pushed to refresh lists and generate certificates in Applied CSR24®, reducing time and costs spent generating unnecessary certificates from outdated holder lists.

Renewal Time-Spent Insights: New Indio reports provide insight into the number of days staff spend processing renewals, helping leaders identify and address bottlenecks in current workflows.

Leading A Great Company

Taylor Rhodes, Chief Executive Officer, leads Team Applied and is responsible for the Company’s overall strategy and operational execution. Taylor joined Applied in 2019 after serving as chief executive officer of SMS Assist, the leading cloud-based software platform for multi-site property management. Previously, he was CEO of Rackspace, where he led the Company’s growth from a cloud pioneer to an industry leader with more than two billion dollars in revenue, while establishing the Company as a mainstay on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For®. Prior to Rackspace, he served as a leader in enterprise, financial, and corporate strategy roles at Electronic Data Systems Corporation. Taylor is a former United States Marine Corps infantry officer and holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves on the board of directors for Applied, Zenoss, and Liquid Web, LLC.

Taylor grew up in a family filled with both cattle ranchers and lawyers. While he lived in the Phoenix area during the summer, he spent his summers working at his family’s ranch in Prescott, Arizona, which is where the work ethic really all started.

“Working on the ranch, growing up as a kid and having an agricultural family, there’s always work to be done. It’s hard work,” Taylor said. “You learn how to work hard and how to do the job the right way.”

The hard work didn’t end on the cattle ranch. In high school, Taylor and his best friend both wanted to be Marines when they grew up, so that’s what they did. During his time in the Marines, Taylor really learned the “team over self” mentality that you see today. He gives the Marine Corps credit for helping him become a better leader and teaching him how to adapt, overcome, and look out for his team.

“We talk a lot about the team. What I learned in the Marine Corps, first of all, you as an individual can do way more than you think you can do,” he said. “And then the second is you can do way, way more if you’ve got a great team around you that’s all in on the mission together and shares the same values.”

New AI-Powered Renewals and Prospecting Solution

Applied Systems® today announced Applied Book Builder™, a prospecting and renewals solution that enables insurance producers and account managers to target new commercial lines prospects and cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Embedded in Applied Epic®, these commercial risk attributes and intelligent account rounding recommendations will create successful producers faster, accelerate renewal and new business growth, and generate a more profitable book of business with the best coverage for customers.

Coming in the first half of 2025, Applied Book Builder will leverage the power of AI to enrich commercial risk profiles based on thousands of publicly available sources to round out risk profiles and identify coverage gaps within existing policies, then deliver corresponding market placement insights to help teams submit business to carriers likely to fit the customer needs.

Core features include:

Commercial Risk Enrichment: Starting with as little as a business name and address, build a detailed risk profile or validate and enrich existing accounts based on thousands of sources, including industry and company websites, social networks, consumer reviews, public records, government databases, and more, to reduce time researching customer risks and exposures.

Account Rounding Recommendations: During renewals, AI-generated insights will pinpoint coverage gaps for existing accounts in Applied Epic, quickly identifying cross-sell and upsell opportunities to boost the average number of policies per client.

Lead List Automation: Import and auto-populate risk profiles for a list of prospects from referrals, events, and other marketing efforts to expand new business opportunities without having to rekey data into Applied Epic.

Market Placement Insights: Gain carrier placement recommendations for identified opportunities for additional coverage to inform carrier placement decisions based on where similar risks are being successfully placed within the agency, ensuring optimal market selection for each client.

“Commercial insurance producers and account teams are traditionally challenged with the time it takes to identify high-potential cross-sell and upsell opportunities and evaluate the right lines to sell based on the customer’s unique risks and exposures, leading to reactive selling and missed revenue. Couple this blind spot at renewals with the time-consuming process for producers to identify new prospects, and there is an opportunity in our industry to better use data to create new premium growth,” said Anupam Gupta, chief product officer of Applied Systems. “Applied Book Builder is a first-of-its-kind for the industry, saving producers and account representatives hours of prospect research, data capture, opportunity analysis, and market determination.”

Epic Quotes Commercial Lines

Applied Systems® today announced the general release of Epic Quotes Commercial Lines, the industry’s embedded commercial lines rating solution, for US agents. Bringing the Tarmika™ instant comparative rating capabilities natively into Applied Epic®, agencies can pre-populate customer and risk data already in Applied Epic to remove redundant data entry and quote multiple carriers in a single interface. This new integrated workflow eliminates the need to quote carriers via their portals so agents can drive bottom-line efficiency and top-line premium growth.

“Our agency decided to pilot Epic Quotes Commercial Lines because we had a lot of success with Tarmika and were excited to see its capabilities embedded within Applied Epic to bring the quoting process into one system,” said Kristin Baker, chief operating officer/vice president of commercial lines, Rollo Insurance Group, speaking on their participation in an early access pilot program. “Being able to accept the quote and create a policy shell all in the same platform is a major benefit that has created a lot of efficiency for our team.”

Epic Quotes Commercial Lines is a single-entry multi-carrier comparative rating natively within Applied Epic. Supporting standard commercial lines of business and providing access to more than 35 markets, the solution allows agency staff to seamlessly remarket or quote new business without ever leaving the management system. Epic Quotes for Commercial Lines uses a single data source for the quoting and application process and leverages insight-driven workflows to initiate remarketing, simplifying the bridge-to-portal bind experience and creating a connected commercial lines experience.

Applied Pay Integrates with Leading Premium Financing Companies

Applied Systems® today announced the integration of premium finance within Applied Pay®, the industry’s only AMS-native payments solution. Integrations with the top three premium finance companies, including AFCO Direct, FIRST Insurance Funding, and Imperial PFS, enable insured customers to solicit financing and sign financing agreements with immediate approvals and upfront terms while paying premiums online. An insured-led workflow for premium financing with no agent intervention on loans up to $100k reduces complexity and time for all stakeholders while delivering insured customers more control over their payment options.

Along with a simple insured payment experience, agents can expect an increase in funded premiums as high as 40% with at-payment financing as opposed to the typical 10-15% with traditional methods. Additionally, at-payment financing reduces the traditional premium collection period of 20 days to less than five days to turnover receivables.

Applied Pay and its premium financing integrations provide a core set of capabilities, including:

At-Payment Financing: Insureds can review and e-sign financing agreements and make initial down payments without leaving the Applied Pay checkout page, decreasing the need for multiple rounds of conversation and document iterations while giving insureds greater control of their payment options.

Flexible Financing with Invoice Consolidation: Insureds can solicit financing on a single large premium or multiple combined invoices to fit their financial needs.

Funding Activity Communications: When financing is secured, funded status information is automatically distributed to all stakeholders, keeping the agent, insured, and premium finance company updated without manual intervention.

Auto-Apply Payment Credits to Management System Debits: Deep integration between Applied Pay, Applied Epic®, and each premium finance Company facilitates the seamless application of premium payment to the correct transactions on the insured’s account in Applied Epic, saving agents time and reducing errors that come with manual reconciliation.

Applied Pay enables independent agents to provide their clients with a secure, simple way to pay premiums online. Directly integrated into Applied Epic, Applied CSR24®, and EZLynx Client Center™, Applied Pay is engineered to provide best-in-class features and automation throughout each phase of the payment journey. Integrated premium financing supports a fully insured-led flow with no agent intervention on loans up to $100k, giving insured customers more control over their payments. From collection through to disbursement, Applied Pay provides agencies and their insured customers with an optimal payment experience from start to finish.

“While digital capabilities around premium financing have dramatically improved over the last 10 years, adoption of agency bill financing has remained flat due to the multiple handoffs and clunky manual processes between the insured, agency, AMS, and premium finance provider, which costs all stakeholders time, E&O risk, and poor experiences,” said Chase Petrey, president of Applied Pay, Applied Systems. “The new integrated premium financing capabilities within Applied Pay, made possible by our close partnerships with the top three premium finance companies, eliminates the back-and-forth exchanges between all parties and gives customers the power to secure financing, delivering a client experience that will foster loyalty while driving growth to agents’ top line and bottom line.”

Swarts, Manning & Associates, Inc. Partners with Applied

Applied Systems® today announced that Swarts, Manning & Associates, Inc. has selected Applied Digital Agency to streamline its prospecting, servicing, and accounting workflows for all lines of business. Leveraging the open technology within its foundational management system, Applied Epic, the agency will seamlessly integrate Applied’s marketing automation, commercial lines application, submission management, and digital payments hub applications to enable a complete digital end-to-end policy lifecycle – from customer acquisition to premium collections and payments – via simple, connected workflows for its growing team.

“Our organization’s needs have become more complex as we’ve grown, and unfortunately, our previous provider couldn’t accommodate the servicing and accounting workflows we needed, resulting in our staff spending too much time manually managing processes and creating reports,” said Dylan Swarts, producer, shareholder, chief financial officer, Swarts, Manning & Associates, Inc. “We’re excited about the integrated tools that Applied Digital Agency will provide each team member of our business, helping them maintain consistent policy workflows and leverage a single view of the customer across lines of business so they can better service accounts and prospect in a more efficient manner.”

Applied’s Digital Agency solution consists of a foundational management system, payment hub, online customer self-service and mobile technology, commercial lines application digitization and automation, and insurer connectivity, all hosted in the cloud. The fully integrated solution enables agencies to create higher-value business transactions and deliver superior customer experiences throughout the entire insurance lifecycle. By leveraging integrated applications that enable agencies to manage their entire business and eliminate duplicative work typically caused by multiple disparate systems, digital agencies operate more efficiently, improve customer service, and accelerate growth and profitability across all lines of business.