Interview with Marcia (Marcy) Froehlich Risk Placement Services RPS

RPS (Formerly known as KDC Associates, LLC) is a multi-million dollar office of Risk Placement Services (RPSins.com). They operate like an MGA and have the ability to rate, quote, bind, issue and endorse policies. Focused mainly on general business, inland marine and auto, they now have a growing line of towing business. It currently accounts for about 50% of their business.

Marcy was one of the group’s first employees and has been with the company for 10 years. Now with 14 employees, only five underwriters and assistants work at RPS headquarters in Las Vegas. The rest work remotely, even before the pandemic.

“Everyone loves working remotely. We’ve never lost an employee and the company gets more work from us,” said Marcy. By eliminating commute time, employees have more time during the day to focus on work and are often willing to work on weekends, or after hours, if a client or agent needs attention right away.

Marcy is Operations Manager with four team members reporting to her that rate and issue policies. She also manages her own book of business. Each team member has a geographic territory with multiple agents assigned. “Organize your team by states, so each gets to know the state regulations and develops a close partnership with the agents they’re working with,” suggested Marcy.

By spreading their team across time zones, they develop expertise on state-specific forms and coverages. For example, rating and issuing policies in Massachusetts (Mass Auto) is definitely different than what is involved with Commercial Auto in Arizona.

Each rater at RPS has 20+ years of experience. To keep these more experienced employees focused and dedicated to policy generation, a team of employees cover other tasks.

• When a new account comes in, a representative in Intake handles data entry to set up the new submission for rating. The basic information on the quote is then sent to a rater, based on territory assignment.
• The raters take the account from there, entering everything else about the risk required for rating purposes.
• A separate, dedicated employee handles all endorsements. Even though NetRate was built assuming users have knowledge of rating and underwriting commercial lines, RPS was able to train a new employee to handle all endorsements on the system.

“Endorsement work is a good way for someone just starting out to learn about insurance,” explained Marcy. “They aren’t starting from scratch with a new quote, but are instead adding a vehicle or changing a location. It’s an excellent position for a person new to the industry to learn terminology and processes.”

RPS has relationships with only one or two agents per state. They build targeted relationships with these agents so they become the agent’s #1 go-to for writing a policy. And the agents know they can request a rush quote when needed.

“We treat them well from a customer experience standpoint, and one way we can do that is with fast turn-around. Everything I need to do my job is in one system. I just need to fill in the blanks. We can rate, quote, bind and issue on behalf of our carrier. Our team is experienced and so our carrier trusts us.”

All of us at MGA Systems are proud to count Marcy and the RPS team among our clients. We work hard to develop the software tools that drive success in the commercial insurance industry. Contact us at (877) 790‑1114 or contact us here to learn how MGA Systems can make your business more efficient and cost effective.