Welland Answers Company’s Needs With a Custom Agency Management System

Northwest Farmer-Stockman, Inc. has been offering quality insurance products to the farming and ranching community for over 75 years. Their products include multiple life lines, Medicare Supplement, annuity, long-term care, as well as accident, disability income and critical illness insurance. Each product line includes a number of options underwritten by several companies with varying commission payouts, and their existing software was unable to accommodate their complex commission schedules and reporting requirements.

Prior to Welland’s customized Agency Management System (AMS) solution, Northwest Farmer-Stockman, Inc. was limited in their ability to input certain key product and company details into their database. This limited their ability to produce reports necessary to successfully run their business. Some of the key requests included defining the multitude of benefits available under each product, paying override based on territory worked and adjusting commission percentages per time period, per product, based on customer age, residence state, and when a portion of the premium is payable at a different rate. In addition, they needed their database to include an unlimited number of hierarchy positions and agents that could be compensated per product, as well as having multiple-themed fields to track customers by addresses, phone number, e-mail address, etc.

Northwest Farmer-Stockman, Inc.’s software firm was unwilling to adapt their program to meet their needs; therefore, they reached out to Welland Company. The initial custom AMS was implemented in 2001, with a web upgrade in 2012. Subsequently, Northwest Farmer-Stockman, Inc. has been able to meet all of management’s needs for specific information via queries, including but not limited to detailed reports for use in their annual budget process. Furthermore, they have the ability to pay commissions / overrides in the manner needed and pay an infinite number of agents on any given contract.

The AMS solution Welland developed has resulted in the expansion of a new revenue stream for Northwest Farmer-Stockman, Inc. and allowed for better customer service by both reducing the response time to customer inquiries and providing the ability to generate specific information on coverage.

To learn more about Welland’s product offerings, please contact Mike Mapes at 206-484-2156 or mmapes@welland.com.