Abstract:
In early 2018, Midwest Family Mutual (MFM) became one of the first carriers to implement Gain Compliance’s Notes solution. This experience turned their CFO, Kristie Van Pelt, into an ardent fan. In this customer story, you will learn about how the expansion to Gain Full Statement made things easier for her during a time of transition.
Key Quote:
“The new additions to our team were able to dive in and start using Gain immediately, just by being so user-friendly. The changes within the team meant that I was now completing Schedule P without our longtime Schedule P expert, so the ease of use benefited me as well.”
Kristie Van Pelt, CFO, Midwest Family Mutual
Background
When Kristie upgraded from Gain’s Notes solution for Full Statement, her team was equally divided with regards to their exposure to Gain. On the one hand, half already derived great benefit from using Gain’s solution for the Notes portion of the filing. The balance of the team, on the other hand, had no experience with Gain’s software. Rather, they completed the other schedules using a legacy vendor’s solution.
Just as Kristie looked forward to realizing the efficiencies of a unified, modern software experience across all schedules, an unexpected curveball was thrown: the Great Resignation hit MFM in 2022 like so many other companies, and it resulted in two 20+ years Accounting personnel leaving right before Annual Statement time.
Despite the turnover, the newly-reformulated team did not miss a beat – a testimonial to how Gain’s software is the best choice for compressing the time it takes for new contributors to get up to speed and provide value.
“The new additions to our team were able to dive in and start using Gain immediately, just by being so user-friendly,” Kristie said. “The changes within the team meant that I was now completing Schedule P without our longtime Schedule P expert, so the ease of use benefited me as well.”
An Immediate Impact
One of the new team members was Andrea Leggat who joined Midwest Family Mutual in the role of Finance Manager. With over twenty years of Statutory Reporting experience, Andrea was deeply knowledgeable on both Life and Property and Casualty filings. “I’ve been responsible for the final wrap up of the NAIC filings after all of the schedules are complete – the validations and the online filing with the NAIC, AM Best and the states.”
Andrea had completed filings for prior companies using legacy vendor software. She explained that, by comparison, those products “definitely felt older and clunkier.” Gain meanwhile, features an interface that was instantly familiar and allowed her to get up to speed quickly, “I like the more modern screen layout with Gain, it’s not as busy as those other pages were.”
With that increased visibility, she easily found her way around statements that were new to her. “I feel that Gain is much easier to navigate, it’s more intuitive,” Andrea recounted. “It’s easier to see errors and correct them quickly. In the other software I’ve used, things just weren’t as clear and I honestly felt like I might break something.”
The design and automation of Gain’s Cash Flow Worksheet typified the lift any team member, but most especially a new one, experiences when provided the right tools. “Gain’s Cash Flow Worksheet is very helpful,” she said, comparing it to the manual entry and effort required of legacy vendor software. “We don’t have to do any manual input on the Cash Flow Worksheet once all the data is in Gain. It just works as you would expect, but if I do have to add a line or make a small adjustment, it’s easy to find the line in the worksheet to do that.”
Andrea was effusive on her experience with completing the Notes. “I’ve done the Notes in Word and it was very time consuming to get all of the page breaks and tables correct,” she recalled. “So yes, I love the Notes in Gain. It just makes it so easy. I like how on the quarters, it will tell you which Notes are required. I love that all the formatting is taken care of, so I’m not worried about the page breaks.”
Conclusion
Gain’s modern software improves outcomes for financial reporting teams. With the time and effort these teams invest in these filings, putting proper tools in their hands has never been more important.
The benefits of proper tools for the work at hand are revealed over time, often showing up in unexpected ways.
For Midwest Family Mutual, they knew that Gain would add efficiencies to their statement processes and improve data quality within their filing. What they didn’t know was how a modern software tool for the annual statement can deliver value when changes occurred within the team itself.
By working as statutory accounting professionals like Andrea Leggat expect, our software makes it much easier for new team members to join teams and quickly contribute to the process.
Learn more about how Gain has improved outcomes for financial reporting teams for other carriers.