Introducing our Insurance Advisory Firm

Just as the world continues to turn through 2020, we’re coming at you again with another exciting client case study. This month we’re introducing a private insurance advisory corporation, based in western Canada. Their team consists of insurance specialists, lawyers and accountants that provide insurance-based and estate planning solutions for high net-worth Canadian families and private company owners. Each insurance solution they provide is customized to address each client’s unique goals.

This busy and efficient team of insurance advisory professionals developed a unique, strategic program to provide insurance solutions to help grow, protect and transfer wealth, and minimize the impact of taxes on wealth transfers to beneficiaries (often family members) and charities. This is truly what sets them apart in the very competitive insurance industry.

Read on to find out how this client went from one in-house assistant to two virtual assistants, working half the hours - and costing even less!

Moving From In-House Administrative Assistance to Virtual Administrative Assistance

During our discovery call with this insurance advisory firm, we learned that they were seeking help after their in-person administrator left the company. She worked 40 hours a week and the team was used to going to her desk to hand off paperwork and tasks. They were concerned that their well-oiled system was about to fall apart.

Transitioning to a virtual assistant felt daunting to this team. They expressed some concern over working in a cloud-based environment, especially due to the incredibly sensitive nature of their work and their clients’ private information. We worked through their concerns together, talked to them about how we share and maintain passwords securely using encrypted systems and went over our privacy policy, our Slayer screening process, and cybersecurity protocols together.

After we discussed their privacy concerns, the firm felt comfortable with our model and we moved on to discussing the list of tasks they needed help with. The initial needs required 11-20 hours a week for:

• Calendar management

• Travel management

• Task management

• Day to day administrative help

The insurance advisory firm works out of Western Canada but has offices based in central and eastern Canada as well. Their days are full with:

• Client and advisors meetings which take place through travelling to and from the client’s place of business or in-house

• Surveying and pricing insurance with all the major carriers in the Canadian market

• Outlining relevant insurance related tax and estate planning, technical analysis, legal and accounting strategies

• Medical and financial underwriting

• Placement and maintenance of policies or implementation with advisors

• Providing third party legal opinions on strategies from trusted law firms

• Annual reviews

We were thrilled to hear this firm’s large list of needs, and keen for the opportunity to work together (hopefully taking even more off of their plates than they envisioned).

Today’s Task List

After working with Admin Slayer for a year, we rose to the occasion and our insurance advisory firm increased our ever growing tasks list. On any given day, this is what you can catch us doing for them:

• Email triage, using Microsoft Outlook

• Calendar management, using Microsoft Outlook Calendar

• Hotel, restaurant and rental car reservations

• Travel management

• Maintaining updated contact lists in ZenDesk Sell

• Setting up video and conference calls with RingCentral

• Paying and filing invoices

• Meeting prep, such as creating meeting folders, agendas, engagement letters, initial invoices and preparing applications

• Creating prospect and client folders in DropBox

• Downloading applicable insurance documents to the proper files

• Ensuring insurance applications have been submitted to the appropriate insurance carriers

  • Continuous follow ups with their clients to ensure that everything required has been received, corresponding with the carriers until the policy is completed

• Informing the team of new policies and adding to a database

• Creating courtesy reminders once a policy is in place

• Policy database maintenance

• Ensuring the licenses, etc. are up to date

• Ensuring that the firm’s team members’ licenses for different provinces, and E&O insurances are renewed yearly and kept up to date

• Arranging the sending of gift baskets to accountants at tax time and Christmas gift baskets for clients during the holidays

• Completing transcriptions dictated through WordZXpressed

We also offer bookkeeping services, and we now maintain the firm’s books as well.

Virtual Services and Cost Savings

When this client had one in-person administrative assistant, she worked 40 hours a week. Now, with Admin Slayer, our insurance advisory firm has not one, but two administrative assistants and the work is done in half that time, at 20 hours per week. Since we work with our clients on a contract basis, they continue to save money by avoiding having to pay for vacations, sick time or benefits.

We were able to save them even more money by helping them use Zoom (securely) to move some of their in-person meetings to virtual ones (the IKEA “Start the car!” commercial comes to mind!).

Since becoming a client nearly three years ago, our insurance advisory firm is confident in just how capable their Admin Slayer team is. Merging our team into their systems, and transferring them to the cloud has allowed the insurance team to spend time on their many crucial tasks, while saving them time and money. It also made the transition to remote work during the pandemic smooth and easy. The peace of mind they have in knowing that we’re working in the background to ensure their clients are happy, with quick customer service and well-maintained insurance policies, is invaluable.

If you’re in the market for saving time and money, let’s have a discovery call. We can’t wait to hear from you!