How a Financial Firm Manages 50-State Licensing

The situation

The company is a leader in loan management and financial services for several industries, including government at the federal, state and local levels, with offices in more than ten states. Serving clients across the country means its licensing department has to keep renewals current everywhere it does business. At the customer's request, we don't name the company.

What went wrong

Licensing was tracked in several Excel spreadsheets. That worked while the list was small. When the licensing department centralized in 2019, the list grew to more than a thousand items, and working it by hand became unworkable.

"When our licensing department centralized in 2019, we could no longer handle our renewals manually," the Licensing Director said. "We needed an automated solution that would alert us when an item was 30, 45, or 60 days from expiring so that we could be more proactive."

Two other problems came with the spreadsheets:

• Reporting was rudimentary. Excel could produce reports, but not the clear view of fees and filings the department needed.
• Absences created risk. If someone was on vacation or out sick, items could be overlooked and become overdue.

How they solved it

Reminders at three points

Each item now has alerts at 60, 45 and 30 days before it expires. The first gives time to prepare, and the later ones catch anything still open.

Every item assigned to someone

Staff assign each item to whoever is responsible for it, and that person is notified by email of every pending renewal that's theirs. When the work is done, the item is marked complete.

Reports on renewals and fees

"With RenewalTracker, we can create reports that show how many items each client has renewed and when, how much they paid in licensing fees, and to which organization," the Licensing Director said.

Time off without gaps

Because everyone can see what's coming up, staff take care of upcoming items before they go on leave. "If they're taking some time off next week, they know what needs to be taken care of in advance," the director said.

The result

"Since we started using RenewalTracker, I can't think of a single item that has been late for renewal, and if there was one, it wasn't the fault of the system," the Licensing Director said. After that success in licensing, the company's legal team began looking at using RenewalTracker for its own processes.

How to apply this in your licensing team

• Centralize first. One list for every state, entity and license type, instead of a spreadsheet per person or region.
• Use more than one reminder. An early alert to start the work and later ones as the deadline gets closer. Set the first one from how long each renewal actually takes.
• Name an owner for every item. Renewals with no owner are the ones that slip.
• Track fees as well as dates. Recording what was paid and to which regulator makes budgets and audits much easier.
• Plan for absences. Make upcoming items visible to the whole team, so leave doesn't mean a missed deadline.

Licensing requirements and renewal cycles vary by state and license type; confirm each one with the issuing regulator.

Doing this in RenewalTracker

RenewalTracker sends automated reminders at the intervals you choose, assigns each item an owner, and reports on renewals and fees across every state and entity. Read the full financial services case study or see RenewalTracker for financial services.