Abstract
In 2019, ALPS Property and Casualty Insurance Company, a single entity filer, became a Gain customer for Notes; less than a year later, ALPS expanded to Gain’s Full Statement solution. In this customer story, you will learn how a self-taught statutory accountant discovered time savings and process improvements with Gain’s modern and intuitive software.
Key Quote
“I’m so familiar with the software now and I feel it helps me do my job better, so there’s time savings there. It definitely allowed me to create some efficiencies within the process as well.”
Tanya Terhark, Senior Accountant, ALPS Insurance
Background
When Tanya Terhark joined ALPS Insurance in 2017, one of her first orders of business was learning how to use their annual statement software. “The company had been using Wings before I got here, so I was able to jump in. That’s how I learn – by just jumping in and messing around to figure out what numbers go where.”
As she became more familiar with the statements, she noticed inefficiencies in the workflow in Wings. “You had to complete everything and then run the validations, which could take quite a while,” she explained. And the number of issues she had to resolve was always a surprise. “I was always just hoping for the best.”
Further, Wings did not have a solution for the Notes, so Tanya developed her own process to complete them. “We used to manage a bunch of Word documents for each Note that we edited and formatted and then we uploaded it,” she said. “There was a lot of Word document manipulation. A lot of manual updates. It was time consuming.”
She recalls that keeping up with changing NAIC guidance for both the Notes, as well as the rest of the statement was time-consuming as well. “it seems there were links to get to the instructions,” she said, “but it was much more of a manual process.”
So Tanya took the initiative on self-education. In addition to reviewing NAIC instructions, she attended webinars and meetings, and consulted forums on NAIC reporting. “I’d read the instructions and dive into the changes and just want to be totally clear on what’s happening and sure of how we are handling that change.”
A New (and Better) Normal
In 2019, Tanya started using Gain’s Notes solution. She immediately realized time savings over the previous Word-based workflows. “We continued using Wings but added Gain Notes,” she said, “which made it a lot easier because we could rely on Gain for the updates.”
When ALPS migrated from Wings to Gain’s Full Statement solution in 2020, she was instantly productive, without any learning curve. “It was really easy, the software is very intuitive.”
Tanya recognizes the benefits of the real-time data model of Gain’s Cloud-native software. “With Gain, I can see problems in the individual cells – you know, your whole green, yellow, red system – I really like that because I can go in and see what’s going on with this cell, click on it, look at the sidebar and be able to navigate here and there.”
Those indicators have allowed her to work differently – and more efficiently – on the statements. “I can fix things as I go. At the end, when I do a full validation, I’ll have a lot less items to deal with at that point because I’ve already been dealing with them as I’ve been creating the statement.”
Tanya cites the comfort and time savings of Gain, “I’m so familiar with the software now and I feel it helps me do my job better, so there’s time savings there. It definitely allowed me to create some efficiencies within the process as well.”
Gain’s Commitment to Continuous Innovation
Recently, a new development in the software prompted her to explore a new statement workflow in Gain. “I tried doing ‘top down’ this year just to test the override functionality,” she said, “but I just didn’t like how it worked for me.” So while she will continue to work on her statements ‘bottoms up’ instead of ‘top down’, she appreciates that Gain supports an alternative approach to complete the filing.
Further, Tanya is complimentary towards Gain’s initiative to innovate, including actively seeking her perspective and ideas. “The team at Gain has always been super receptive to my feedback and super quick if I’ve ever had an issue. The customer support is great.”
Conclusion
Tanya taught herself how to complete statutory financial statements simply by diving into the annual statement software her company was using at the time, and just figuring it out.
When she dove into Gain’s modern, Cloud-native software, it presented her statement exactly as she expected. With that, she was able to enhance and refine her workflows for a better statement experience overall.
Learn more about how Gain has improved outcomes for financial reporting teams for other carriers.