How Long Does It Take an Insurance Agency to Switch IT Providers, and Will There Be Downtime?

Switching IT providers typically takes an insurance agency about 10 weeks from kickoff to wrap-up with our Great Start onboarding process, and it shouldn't stop your CSRs and producers from quoting, servicing, or binding along the way. Most of the work happens behind the scenes, coordinated by a dedicated project manager, with a firm cutover date agreed in advance.

That timeline isn't a promise for every agency. Number of offices, an on-site server, how well your current setup is documented, and how cooperative your outgoing provider is can all move it. What should not change is the process: the same steps, in the same order, every time.

The 4 Stages of a Provider Switch

Stage 1: Kickoff (first 1 to 2 weeks)

• A roughly one-hour onboarding meeting with your project manager
• Confirming emergency contacts, who can request support, and office hours for every location
• Agreeing on what counts as an emergency for your agency, and who we call
• Collecting your vendor list, including your agency management system, phone provider, and other software vendors. We take over vendor coordination from there.
• Reviewing your most recent cyber insurance application, so our controls match what you told your carrier

Stage 2: Discovery and service rollout

• A technician visit to document your network, firewall, computers, and installed software
• Collecting administrative credentials into a secured vault, never email
• Rolling out monitoring, managed detection and response, and backup
• Inventorying every remote-access tool. Nothing is removed without your approval.

Stage 3: Microsoft 365, network, and user security

• Multifactor authentication enforced, with advance notice to your staff. We provide the wording.
• User accounts checked against your actual staff list, so former employees' access is shut off
• Security awareness training enrollment for your team

Stage 4: Wrap-up

• A follow-up call to confirm everything is complete, and access to our client portal
• A security addendum recording any recommended services your agency chooses to decline
• Your first technology planning review on the calendar

Will There Be Downtime?

A well-run switch shouldn't take your agency offline. Three things keep it that way:

1. A firm cutover date. We coordinate it directly with your current provider, so there's no gap where nobody is responsible.
2. Timing around your busy season. We can plan the cutover around your heaviest renewal months.
3. Disruptive changes are scheduled, not sprung. Anything your staff will notice, like multifactor authentication or a new file location, comes with notice first.

What If Your Current Provider Doesn't Cooperate?

It's one of the most common worries we hear. In our experience, outgoing providers cooperate when the handoff is treated as a professional handoff, not a takeover. They usually need time to reclaim their own software subscriptions, so we agree on timing and give them room to do that.

The one safeguard that keeps any transition on track: your agency should hold its own administrator credentials. Every agency should have emergency "break-glass" admin accounts it controls directly, not accounts only its IT provider can reach. With those in place, even a difficult handoff can be worked through.

We also don't rely on the outgoing provider's documentation. We rebuild it from our own discovery, because documentation is often out of date by the time an agency decides to switch.

What Your Agency Actually Does During the Switch

Mostly, you make decisions and open doors. Our team does the technical work, and you work through one point of contact: your project manager. Expect to join the kickoff, share your vendor list and cyber insurance application, arrange site access for each office, approve any remote-access removals, and give staff a heads-up before changes they'll notice. Progress check-ins run weekly or every other week, depending on the stage.

A Real Client Example

The problem: In 2017, Block Insurance Agency's remote IT person retired, and the agency, with offices in Waynesfield and Wapakoneta, Ohio, had to find a new provider.

The solution: The agency switched to Tomorrow's Technology Today.

The result: "The single biggest benefit our company experienced is the ability to concentrate on selling and serving insurance rather than dealing with our technology and computer issues," says Don Ritchey, the agency's president.

Before You Switch

Make sure the new agreement protects you, including how you'd leave if it ever came to that. Read what should be included in a managed IT agreement for an insurance agency, see what managed IT costs for a 10 to 50 person agency, and work through 21 questions every insurance agency should ask before choosing an IT provider.

Why Insurance Agencies Work With Tomorrow's Technology Today

• Supporting independent insurance agencies since 2011, and local businesses for more than 20 years
• Great Start onboarding with a dedicated project manager for every new client
• Headquartered in St. Henry, Ohio, with an office in Fort Wayne, serving agencies across Northwest Ohio and Northeast Indiana
• Woman-owned and woman-led
• Every technician is security-trained to CJIS standards and background-checked
• Microsoft Partner

See how we support independent insurance agencies across Ohio and Indiana.

Thinking about switching? Book a 10-minute discovery call and we'll walk you through how the switch would work for your agency. Call us at (419) 678-2083 or visit www.TomTechToday.com/discoverycall to schedule yours.