Confidentiality-Aware MSP · Petoskey, MI · Since 2015

Insurance Agency IT That Treats PII Like the Asset It Is

You shouldn’t have to defend your data-handling decisions. We build them defensibly from the start — for independent agencies, MGAs, and wholesalers across Northern Michigan, whether you run Applied Epic, AMS360, EZLynx, HawkSoft, NowCerts, Vertafore Sagitta, or QQCatalyst.

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The Daily Reality

Common Technology Challenges We Solve

for Insurance Agencies

We support insurance agencies across Northern Michigan, and the pain points are remarkably consistent. If any of these sound familiar, your generalist IT provider may not understand the daily realities of agency operations — but we do.

Carrier Portal Login Friction

Your CSRs are jumping between Progressive, Travelers, Hartford, Auto-Owners, Citizens, and another 8 carrier portals every day — each with its own password rules and MFA quirks. The minutes add up. So do the password resets that lock people out at the worst possible moment.

NAIC Data Security Compliance Uncertainty

Michigan adopted the NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law (Model 668) in 2021. You’re a licensee with PII obligations, but your current IT setup hasn’t been mapped to it. “We probably comply” is not a defensible answer to the Department of Insurance and Financial Services or to your E&O carrier.

Wire Fraud & Email Spoofing Attempts

Your accountant just got a ‘wire the renewal premium to this new account’ email that looked exactly like the carrier’s. Spoofed display name, plausible domain, urgent tone. Without proper DMARC/SPF/DKIM and anti-impersonation rules, the next one will land in your inbox too — and one of these days, someone will wire the money.

Document Storage Sprawl

Applications in email, policy PDFs in Drive, EOBs scanned to a network share, dec pages attached to AMS notes, certificates of insurance saved to a CSR’s desktop. Five years from now, when a claim or a producer dispute hits, can you actually find the original document — and prove it’s the original?

AMS Slowdowns During Renewal Season

It’s mid-November, renewal season is full throttle, and your AMS is dragging because the database needs maintenance nobody scheduled. Every minute a CSR can’t pull a policy is a minute they can’t close, and a client is waiting on the other end of the call wondering if your agency has its act together.

Onboarding a New CSR Takes Two Days

AMS account, carrier portal credentials (a dozen of them), email, raters, document scanner, e-signature platform, MFA enrollment, phone extension — without a documented checklist, every new hire’s setup is slightly different and something always gets missed. Then offboarding is worse: dormant carrier-portal accounts are an audit finding.

Defensible by Design

Confidentiality-Aware IT for an Insurance Agency

What it actually looks like, day to day

NAIC Model 668 isn’t a one-time checklist or a poster on the wall. It’s a set of daily configuration choices in the AMS, email, and workstations your team uses every minute of every day. Most agencies we talk to are doing 65% of what’s needed and assume their E&O carrier will warn them if they’re not. They won’t — until a breach happens and you find out that ‘we probably comply’ was actually false. The cost of getting it wrong starts with E&O non-renewal and ends with the Michigan DIFS asking for documentation you don’t have.

Encrypted email for any message carrying PII. Applications, dec pages, claims info, SSNs — encrypted in transit and at rest by default. Aligned with NAIC Model 668 Section 4(D) safeguards and current cyber-insurance underwriting expectations.
MFA on every system that touches PII. AMS, email, carrier portals (where supported), document management, remote desktop, VPN. Push-based MFA, not text-message codes (SMS-based MFA is no longer considered a reasonable safeguard).
Managed EDR on every CSR workstation. Endpoint detection that watches for ransomware behavior, blocks it in real time, and gives us a forensics trail if something does slip through. Increasingly required by E&O underwriters and explicitly named in NAIC 668 risk-assessment expectations.
Workstation auto-lock and screen timeout. Front-desk and CSR workstations lock automatically after a short idle period. A client’s SSN and dec page do not appear on a screen visible to the next walk-in.
Encrypted, off-site backup with a tested restore. Your AMS database, document library, and email — backed up nightly, restore tested monthly, with an offline copy that ransomware can’t touch.
Confidentiality and data-handling agreements with every vendor. Including us. We sign a confidentiality and data-handling agreement before we onboard an agency. Required by NAIC 668 Section 4(F) third-party service provider oversight.
Audit logging on AMS access and document handling. When a producer dispute or carrier audit asks who pulled what policy when, you need to be able to answer in five minutes. We configure logging on the systems where the answer lives.
A documented incident response and breach notification plan. NAIC Model 668 requires a written incident response program, plus breach notification to the Michigan DIFS within specific timeframes. The first 72 hours determine whether you have a manageable cost or a regulatory finding. We help you write the plan before you need it.

This is what we mean by confidentiality-aware — we configure your systems with the assumption that they’ll be reviewed by DIFS, audited by your E&O carrier, or breached someday, and we want your agency to come out of that scenario clean.

What We Actually Do

How We Support Your Insurance Agency

Help Desk That Knows Agency Management Systems

Your team calls or emails — we don’t waste time asking what your AMS is. We know your stack: Applied Epic, AMS360, EZLynx, HawkSoft, NowCerts, Vertafore Sagitta, QQCatalyst, Agency Matrix. We know which vendor escalation path each one needs. Average pickup under 15 minutes during business hours.

Confidentiality-Aware Microsoft 365 Deployment

We configure M365 the way an insurance agency needs it — encrypted email, MFA, conditional access, retention policies, anti-impersonation rules to defend against wire-fraud spoofing, sensitivity labels for PII. Already on M365 but unsure your tenant is configured correctly? Free posture review.

AMS Performance & Lifecycle Management

Whether you’re on Applied Epic, AMS360, EZLynx, HawkSoft, NowCerts, or moving from one to another, we manage the database health, the updates, the integrations, and the disaster recovery. No more renewal-season slowdowns and no more ‘I think it’s the AMS’ without a clear answer.

Carrier Portal Access & SSO Where Possible

We work with you to consolidate carrier portal access through SSO where the carrier supports it, secure password management where it doesn’t, and clean MFA enrollment for every account. When a carrier portal is down, we know it’s not your network — and we tell you so you can move on.

Multi-Office & Remote Producer Networking

Your producers work from the agency, from a satellite office, from home, from a client site. They need the same AMS access, the same documents, the same email — securely, every time. We build agencies that work as one operation regardless of where each producer is sitting.

AMS Data & Document Backup

Your AMS database isn’t just data — it’s the agency. Hourly snapshots of your AMS database, document library, and email, encrypted off-site, with a tested restore process. If a workstation dies or ransomware hits, you’re back up while another agency is still on the phone with their E&O carrier.

Vendor Coordination So Your Office Manager Stops Being IT

AMS vendor, carrier portal issues, rater problems, e-signature platform, phone system, ISP, scanner integration — when something goes wrong, you don’t chase each one. We coordinate vendor escalations on your behalf and keep you in the loop with one point of contact.

Strategic IT Planning

Quarterly business reviews so your IT decisions stop being reactive. Hardware refresh planning, NAIC 668 readiness, cyber and E&O insurance compliance, budget forecasting, and a clear path for what’s next — including the merger or producer-hire you’re considering next year.

Why Firms Choose Us

We Own the Outcome

“You shouldn’t have to defend your data-handling decisions — we build them defensibly from the start.”

15-minute response time, not next-business-day. When a producer is on a renewal call and the AMS won’t load, “we’ll have someone reach out tomorrow” is not an acceptable answer.
Local presence in Petoskey. When a problem really does need a person on-site — like an aging server that won’t boot — we’re a short drive away. We support Northern Michigan from Northern Michigan.
Confidentiality-aware technicians, not generalists. Every member of our team is trained on the PII handling and NAIC requirements that apply to an insurance agency. We don’t hand off your tickets to a help desk in another time zone.
Serving Northern Michigan since 2015. A decade of staying in this market, working with agencies through Windows 7 to Windows 11, on-prem servers to cloud AMS, and the post-2021 NAIC compliance shift. We’ve seen the failure modes and built the runbooks.
A signed Master Services Agreement and confidentiality agreement before we touch anything. Agencies need to know what they’re getting and what’s covered. Our agreements are clear, NAIC 668 vendor-oversight ready, and we sign them before the first ticket.
We own the outcome, not just the ticket. Our job is to keep your agency running — not to close tickets and bill add-ons. If something needs more attention than a quick fix, we say so and handle it.

Where We Show Up

Insurance Agency IT Across Northern Michigan

Headquartered in Petoskey with on-site service across the surrounding region. If your firm is in Northern Michigan and you don’t see your town listed, give us a call — we likely cover you.