SuranceBay offers subscribers of our service the ability to set up "Affiliate-Agency Access." This forum covers the following topics:
- WHAT IS AN AFFILIATE AGENCY?
- CUSTOM FEATURES
- LIMITATIONS
- HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
- HOW TO GET STARTED
- AFFILIATE WORKER VIEW
- AFFILIATE PROCESSOR VIEW
- AFFILIATE EMAILS
- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1. WHAT IS AN AFFILIATE AGENCY?
An Affiliate Agency (previously called a Sub-Agency) is simply a Producer or Agency within your downline with their own downline of agents, and they would like to manage their own producers as an Affiliate Account. This feature allows the Affiliate Agencies to:
- Login to SureLC.com as either an Affiliate Worker or an Affiliate Processor
- View & Manage Producer profiles (assigned to their designated affiliation only)
- Hand-hold their Producers during the registration process
- Send out a Request/Review when an agent is ready to get contracted with a carrier
- Review & process contract requests (Affiliate Processors ONLY)
An affiliate agency is essentially piggybacking on your SureLC account, but it has limited access to SureLC functions.
If you add this feature to your SureLC account, your agency can set up as many affiliate agencies as needed. This is done by adding new admins and setting them up as either affiliate workers or affiliate processors (on the Admins page).
2. CUSTOM FEATURES
You can use many custom features with your Affiliate Agencies. Click on any of the following topics to learn more about these features:
- CARRIER RESTRICTIONS
- LIMITING PRODUCT SELECTIONS
- CUSTOM AFFILIATION WEB LINKS (FOR PRODUCER REGISTRATION & LOGINS)
- UNIQUE BUSINESS CONTACT INFO
- DESIGNATING HIERARCHY & COMMISSION SCHEDULES
- SETTING STRICT VALIDATION RULES
- DESIGNATING MASTER E&O POLICIES
3. LIMITATIONS
-
Producer Access
Affiliate Agency admins ONLY have access to the downline producers (the producers assigned to their designated affiliation). An Affiliation must be set up for each affiliate agency. Affiliations will be used to designate the group of Producers the Affiliate Agency should have access to.
Please Note: Affiliate Agency admins are limited to one affiliation only. They cannot be assigned to multiple affiliations.
- Email Notifications
By default, the parent/agency account receives all email notifications related to new producer registrations and requested contracts.
After a producer reviews and signs a carrier contract, an email confirmation is sent to your agency contact email, not the affiliate agency's email address.
If using a custom link for the affiliation for new producer registrations, an affiliate agency worker or processor email can be cc'd on new producer registrations. This can be set up under Affiliations -> Settings -> Custom Link.
If you want to notify one or more contacts at the affiliate agency of successful new producer self-registrations and new carrier contract submissions, you can add their email addresses on the settings tab under affiliation settings. However, please note that new carrier contract submission emails will only be sent to email addresses that are set up as affiliate processors (not affiliate workers).
- Who Processes Carrier Contract Requests?
Part of the submission process is to set up hierarchy and compensation levels and select the forms. Typically, only your Agency Administrators have the ability to do this.
Affiliate Agency workers can submit producer appointment REQUEST/REVIEWS but cannot process the paperwork UNLESS you have designated the affiliate agency worker as an Affiliate Processor. Affiliate processors can review and process producer contract requests within their assigned affiliation.
Please Note: Since Affiliate Processors have access to process contracts, this also means they have access to hierarchy & compensation schedule settings within the contract review.
- Submitting State License Renewals:
Affiliate Agency workers cannot become a SUBMITTER for license renewals without being designated as an Affiliate Processor.
- Reports:
Currently, Affiliate Agency workers & processors cannot access any Web Reports.
-
Downline Producer Access
Affiliate workers and processors ONLY have access to the producers assigned to their affiliation. If the producers under their affiliation have producers under them, they must be assigned to the same affiliation, or affiliate admins will not have access to those producer profiles. Please review the FAQs below for more information.
4. HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
- There is a $49.00 monthly fee per affiliate agency
(This charge applies to each affiliation with at least one Affiliated agency worker assigned to it). - SuranceBay will not charge the Affiliate Agency directly. All charges are billed to the Primary agency account.
- You can have as many affiliate agency workers or processors as you like per agency. This does not affect the monthly fee per agency.
- Affiliate agency fees will be shown on the Billing page under agency settings.
5. HOW TO GET STARTED
1) Setup the Affiliation
- Login to SureLC.com.
- From the navigation menu, select Affiliations.
- Select the +ADD AFFILIATION button on the top right.
- Entered the name for the Affiliate Agency group.
- Select the APPLY button to create the affiliation.
Please Note: If using a custom link, you can customize the information shown on the login and registration screen for the affiliate agency. The information entered as business name, contact name, phone number (for the affiliate agency), and email will be shown to the affiliate producers on the login and registration screens (as long as "Use Affiliation Info" is enabled at the top of the affiliations page).
2) Add the Affiliate Agency Admins
- Select ADMINS in the navigation menu.
- Select ADD NEW ADMIN on the top right.
- Enter the required information for the new admin who will be managing the affiliation.
- Use the Admin Setup wizard to determine the appropriate assigned user role.
For question 1, "Which producers should this admin account be able to work with?" You MUST answer "Only producers in this affiliation" and select the affiliation name from the list.
For question 2, "Is the admin authorized to submit contracting requests to carriers?"
Answering Yes will allow the admin to review and process contracts. This will set up the admin as an Affiliate Processor.
Answering No will set up the admin as an Affiliate Worker.
Please note: The Permissions table on the right explains the differences between affiliate workers and processors.
- Select SAVE & EXIT to create the new admin account. You'll be asked to confirm the creation of the affiliate agency (as shown below). Selecting Confirm will enable this feature for your agency. Please be aware that there is a $49.00 monthly charge per affiliate agency.
3) Next Steps for Affiliate Workers & Processors
After being added as an affiliate worker or processor, the new admin will receive an activation email from setup@surancebay.com. Affiliate admins will use the link in the email to validate their email address and create their account password. After successfully creating an account password, they will automatically log into SureLC. For all future logins, they will go to SureLC.com to log in to their account.
6. AFFILIATE WORKER VIEW
Admins designated as affiliate workers will have access to the Producers page, Firms page, and Fastlane. They will use the navigation menu shown to the left to navigate between pages. They will only have access to the producers assigned to their affiliation.
PRODUCERS
Affiliate workers will use the Producers page to review and update producer profiles, register new producers, create new carrier contract requests, and send them to the producer's email (using the Request Review feature). For more information about how to use the Producers screen, click here.
FIRMS
Using the Firm's page, affiliate workers can add firms and review and update firm profiles (for producers with their DBA set up as a business entity in their profile).
For more information about how to use the Firms page, click here.
FASTLANE
Use Fastlane to create multiple new carrier contract requests for one or multiple producers in a batch simultaneously.
Select "One Carrier to Multiple Producers" to send a specific carrier contract to multiple producers. Or, select "One Producer to Many Carriers" to send multiple carrier contracts to one producer. Once submitted, the selected producer(s) will receive a request review email for each new carrier contract request. From the email, producers can start and complete their contract review.
For more information about how to use Fastlane Click Here. .
7. AFFILATE PROCESSOR VIEW
Affiliate processors have access to the Producers page, Firms page, and Fastlane but also to the Work Inbox, where they can review and process pending contract requests for the producers assigned to their designated affiliation. To open any pending contract request, click on the producer name or use the actions menu at the end of the row for more options.
Work Inbox
For more information about how to use the Work Inbox, click here.
8. AFFILIATE EMAILS
Affiliate Workers - Affiliate workers can receive new producer notification emails by adding their email address to the email notifications section under the affiliation settings. To access affiliations settings, go to the affiliations page and select the edit button at the end of the row. You can add one or multiple emails to the notifications section on the settings tab.
Affiliate Processors - If any affiliate processors are assigned to an affiliation, you can send notification emails to them by adding their email address to the email notifications section under the affiliation settings. When added, notifications will be sent when new producers successfully register using the affiliation custom link and when new carrier contracts are submitted by producers assigned to their affiliation.
Please Note: New contract submission emails will only be sent to affiliate processors to make them aware of new pending contracts that require attention. Affiliate processors can review the new contracts in the work inbox or on the contract requests tab in the producer profile.
9. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
Q1. LOGGING IN: Where do affiliate workers and processors go to access their SureLC accounts?
A1. Affiliate workers & processors MUST go to SureLC.com to log into their SureLC accounts.
Q2. MULTIPLE AFFILIATIONS: Can an Affiliate Agency Worker work with more than one Affiliation?
A2. No, affiliate admins can only work with one affiliation.
Q3. SURANCEBAY EMAIL DISTRIBUTION: Are my Affiliate Agency Workers signed up to receive email notices from SuranceBay?
A3. This is optional. By default, Affiliate Agency Workers receive a welcome email informing them that you have added them as Affiliate Agency Workers. This email confirms their email address and provides a link for them to create their account password. We maintain a separate email distribution list for Affiliate Agencies, so they will only receive emails that are pertinent to them. They are not on the normal email distribution list as our Agency Users. See Affiliate Agency Email Signup for more details.
Q4. MULTIPLE AFFILIATE AGENCY LEVELS: I have an Affiliate Agency that also has an Affiliate Agency underneath them. Does this functionality support multiple Affiliate Agency levels? (BGA --> Affiliate Agency --> Affiliate Agency --> Producer).
A4. Affiliate agency admins can be assigned to only one affiliation. SureLC supports one Affiliate Agency level under the primary agency account.
Q5: HIERARCHIES & COMMISSIONS: Do affiliations have anything to do with hierarchies and commissions?
A5: Not by default. Hierarchy and commission information is entered independently of affiliation information. That said, if you add a new hierarchy and commission schedule and use the affiliation name as the schedule name, that schedule will be the new default schedule for all producers assigned to the affiliation.
Q6. REPORTS: Can I run a report on how many appointment requests we processed for our affiliate agency?
A6. Yes. From your SureLC navigation menu, click on Web Reports, then "Appointments By Producer." Choose a time frame from those available, and once the report loads, click on the column labeled Affiliation to sort the report. You can then click Export in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and open the report in Excel to sort further and/or save and/or print. Please note that affiliate workers and processors don't have access to reports. However, they can apply filters to the Producers screen, Firms Screen, or Work Inbox and then export the information shown in the view to Excel.
Q7. ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS: Who should I contact with any additional Questions?
A7. Contact SuranceBay at 877-264-6888, or email us at support@surancebay.com.
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