From staffing challenges to rising customer expectations and rapidly evolving technology, agencies are navigating more complexity than ever. Experienced employees are retiring, customer expectations continue to rise, and teams are being asked to do more without adding head count. At the same time, disconnected systems and manual processes make it difficult to keep work moving efficiently across the agency.
As a result, agencies aren’t just looking for new ways to eliminate operational friction. The agencies that can adapt quickly, streamline workflows, and empower their teams will be best positioned to compete in the years ahead.
Forward-thinking agencies are shifting their focus from simply managing policies to accelerating what Vertafore calls Distribution Velocity. Distribution Velocity is the ability to adapt faster, operate smarter, and grow without adding unnecessary complexity.
Building Distribution Velocity requires more than adopting new tools. It requires an agency management system with the right foundational capabilities to remove friction, connect teams, and support growth.
The agencies leading the market are building their distribution velocity around three essential technology capabilities within their agency management systems:
1. One connected agency experience
Many agencies still operate across a collection of disconnected systems, spreadsheets, inboxes, and manual processes, all of which result in operational drag.
High-performing agencies are reducing operational friction by connecting workflows, data, and servicing into a unified experience. When information flows seamlessly across the organization, teams spend less time searching for answers and more time servicing clients.
The most successful agencies are increasingly evaluating technology through the lens of whether a tool causes friction or reduces it.
A connected agency experience is the foundation of Distribution Velocity because it enables information, people, and workflows to move together instead of creating bottlenecks.
2. AI to amplify your team, not replace them
AI-powered workflows can interpret incoming information, summarize communications, retrieve trusted answers, surface exceptions that require human review, and trigger downstream workflows automatically.
The combination of AI and automation creates a powerful outcome of less manual work, faster service, and more consistency.
Consider these two examples that illustrate how AI is being applied inside agency operations today:
Faster answers across the organization
AI-powered insurance expertise tools can retrieve trusted content, synthesize answers, and provide citations directly within the workflow. This approach can deliver answers up to 80% faster while helping standardize knowledge across teams.
Transforming commission reconciliation
AI-powered reconciliation workflows can automatically extract carrier statement data, match transactions to policies, identify exceptions, flag discrepancies, and route only unresolved items for human review.
The result of this is dramatically less manual processing and significantly faster month-end close cycles. Vertafore’s new Reconciliation Agent is designed to reduce reconciliation efforts by as much as 90% through automation and intelligent matching.
By reducing repetitive work and accelerating everyday process, AI helps agencies build Distribution Velocity without increasing staff or sacrificing service quality.
3. A platform built to scale
Agency management systems should provide open architecture, robust integrations, and a connected ecosystem that allows agencies to adapt as business needs evolve.
The right platform doesn’t just support today’s workflows; it provides the foundation for future growth, new technologies, and evolving customer expectations.
A scalable platform ensures agencies can continue building Distribution Velocity as their business grows, integrating new capabilities without creating additional complexity.
The bottom line
Agencies that want to compete in 2026 and beyond need technology that helps them move faster, reduce operational drag, and scale efficiently.
Distribution Velocity isn’t achieved through a single feature or product. It’s the result of connecting people, workflows, and technology in ways that eliminate friction and allow work to move faster across the business.
To do this, agencies need to ensure their AMS provides the ability to create a connected agency experience, leverage AI to eliminate manual or redundant work, and be flexible for growth and integrations to support scalability in the future.
Watch our webinar, “3 AMS Must-Haves For Faster, Connected Agencies in 2026,” to see live demos of Vertafore’s AMS360, AgencyOne platform, Vertafore Velocity™ AI platform, and additional workflows helping agencies simplify operations, improve productivity, and accelerate growth.