Why this memo.
Applied Systems publishes a credible AI roadmap and Applied Epic IQ ships real value at the average agency. The mid-market independent agency with $10M-$50M revenue is not the average, particularly when commercial lines are 60%+ of the book. The leverage available to a $24M Northeast P&C agency is in workflows that touch Applied Epic but are not Applied Epic features: real-time COI generation against carrier templates, submission packaging across the agency's actual carrier pool, retention pipelines with the agency's renewal cadence baked in.
This memo describes the architecture for that custom layer.
The Applied Epic surface area we touch.
Applied Epic exposes a robust integration surface through Applied API Marketplace and Applied Direct services. Authenticated reads/writes against client, policy, claim, activity, and document entities; webhooks for activity and policy events; document attachment APIs. We integrate at this layer, not at the database level.
For agencies with stricter data-residency requirements, we deploy entirely inside the agency's Azure or AWS tenant, with the AI layer reading/writing through the API. Client data does not leave the agency's environment.
Workflow I: COI generation and delivery in under 5 minutes.
The single highest-impact workflow we automate. Median mid-market agency clears commercial COIs in 14-22 hours. Top-quartile clears them in 11 minutes. The 12% retention gap that follows from this is well-documented.
The custom AI version: receives the COI request (email, portal, or carrier dashboard), reads the client policy and the additional-insured request specifics from Applied Epic, drafts the certificate against the carrier's current template, validates required endorsements, sends to the requester with the AI-drafted email, logs the activity to Epic. The CSR sees the queue with one-click approve, only intervenes for the edge cases the model flags.
Architecture: webhook listener for inbound (Microsoft Graph, Outlook plugin, agency portal); template library tuned per top-20 carriers; certificate-PDF generation with the agency's branding; activity write-back to Epic via Applied API.
Workflow II: Submission packaging across the agency's actual carrier pool.
New-business submissions, renewal remarkets, and mid-term changes. The custom-AI version assembles the carrier-specific submission package (loss-runs, supplementals, schedules of values, narrative descriptions) from Applied Epic plus document storage, formatted to the carrier's actual current template, and routes it to the producer for the underwriting-judgment call before sending.
Recovery: 25-40% of submission cycle time. Producer time goes to underwriting judgment, not to packaging.
Workflow III: Retention pipeline with renewal-readiness baked in.
90/60/30 retention cadence is supposed to be automatic. In practice it isn't, because the agency hasn't operationalized it across producers. The custom AI watches Applied Epic for renewal trigger points, pulls the prior-year renewal context, drafts the producer outreach, surfaces the at-risk accounts (premium increases above threshold, carrier non-renewals, claims activity) in time for the producer to do something about it.
Recovery: 4-9% retention lift at audited agencies. At a $24M agency, that's $1M-$2.2M of preserved commission revenue annually.
Workflow IV: Producer onboarding RAG over the agency's submission archive.
Institutional knowledge of carriers, appetite, niche markets, and "the way we write that risk" lives in the heads of three senior producers. Custom retrieval over the agency's last decade of Applied Epic data turns a year-one producer into a year-three contributor for retrieval-heavy workflows.
Architecture: RAG index over Applied Epic policies, attachments, activity notes; permissions-aware query layer; Slack/Teams or in-Epic chat interface for producer queries.
What we don't build.
We do not replace Applied Epic. We do not build a competitor to Applied Epic IQ. If the agency wants Applied's roadmap configured well, Applied Pro Services is the right answer. If the agency wants the workflows above, on top of Epic, ours is.