How Caldwell Insurance Saved 10+ Hours Weekly with Ascend

Glenn S. Caldwell Insurance Services, a family-owned agency nestled in the heart of Sonora, California, has been a cornerstone of local insurance services for generations. With a migration toward Hawksoft 6 and potential acquisition plans on the horizon, the agency has consistently prioritized innovative solutions to serve their clients more effectively while growing the business.

As Henderson Brothers scaled its operations, the firm confronted significant inefficiencies in its direct bill reconciliation and broader accounting processes—particularly with its existing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution.

The team had spent over a year investing in and building out their RPA workflow for their 16 largest payers. After significant time and money spent hardcoding logic and mapping complex data patterns, they found the approach wasn’t paying off. Despite the effort, the solution still required manual intervention, with the team tackling large volumes of manual exceptions month over month and ultimately proved not scalable for their biggest struggles with direct bill reconciliation.

Other roadblocks included:‍

• Time-Consuming Manual Work: Manual reconciliation of commission statements consumed over 70 hours per month, including repetitive data entry and verification.
• Lack of Trust in Current RPA: The bot matched only ~80% of entries but required 100% manual auditing due to accuracy concerns, undermining efficiency gains after significant time and monetary investments in the bots.
• Data Quality & Visibility Gaps: With unreliable data mapping and inconsistent policy matching, the team couldn’t confidently track revenue or identify missing commissions—estimated at up to $250,000 per year in leakage.

Recognizing the limitations of their RPA system, Henderson Brothers turned to Ascend to help replace the bots and establish a more intelligent, scalable automation solution.

The Caldwell team implemented Ascend’s agency bill automation platform – purpose-built for agencies facing increased challenges in invoicing and accounting processes that come with working in non-admitted markets.

Ascend provided one unified workspace that offered the Caldwell team:

• Automated invoice generation with AI-powered document processing
• Real-time commission and payment tracking
• Simplified trust accounting workflow
• Seamless integration with Hawksoft 6
• Digital payment options for insureds including ACH and credit card
• One flow for customers and accounting for both pay in full and premium financed policies
• Automated email reminders for invoices

The best part – the team’s transition to Ascend was fast. Both teams initially met with each other the first week of October in 2024 to discuss their challenges, and by the third week of the month, Caldwell's account and users were all set up.

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Since adopting Ascend, Caldwell has not only optimized its existing agency bill processes, but also seamlessly onboarded a newly acquired agency without increasing operational overhead. While scaling their operations over 6 months, they saw nearly double the agency bill volume than anticipated but their respective work decreased. The team has experienced:

• Saved 10+ hours per week across accounting and service teams by eliminating manual trust accounting, reconciliation, and payment collection related tasks.
• Nearly 90% of premium-financed customers enrolled in autopay, reducing overdue invoices and time spent on payment follow-up.
• 18% increase in insureds opting to finance premiums, unlocking a new revenue stream through financing fees and improving cash flow consistency.

Across all these levers, the partnership with Ascend has positioned Caldwell Insurance for scalable growth, showcasing how purpose-built technology can eliminate operational bottlenecks and empower agencies to scale efficiently.