How NextGen Insurance replaced three disconnected systems with Ascend

NextGen Insurance is an independent insurance agency founded by owner and sole broker Tristin Hodges, who opened the agency on January 1, 2025. As a one-person operation supporting nearly 100 five-star Google reviews, Tristin has built every process in the business himself, from sales through servicing to back-office accounting, while maintaining hands-on, personal relationships with clients.

As NextGen’s book of business grew, the patchwork of tools supporting payments, premium financing, and reconciliation began creating more work behind the scenes. NextGen moved those processes onto Ascend, simplifying day-to-day operations and giving Tristin more time to focus on serving clients and growing the agency.

Reverse-engineering every deposit

Before Ascend, NextGen collected payments through Authorize.net. Because insurance payments must move through a trust account for compliance, every dollar had to be tracked precisely, but the processor held funds for 5–8 days and then released them in mixed batches covering many policies at once, with no breakdown of which payment belonged to which client. Each batch had to be manually reverse-engineered to reconcile it against what was actually owed, and to meet carrier payment deadlines.

Manual invoice creation

Every new customer invoice required manually editing a PDF template through DocuSign: entering the client's name, address, coverage details, premiums, taxes, and fees by hand for each policy. With no way to auto-populate this information from a carrier quote, the process had to be repeated in full for every new policy, adding friction right at the moment a client was deciding to sign.

A third layer of financing paperwork

NextGen also worked with an outside premium finance company, Capital Premium, which meant tracking a separate set of paperwork for any client who financed their policy, including who financed, how much, and managing a second party entirely if that client canceled or missed a payment.

NextGen implemented Ascend to consolidate payment collection, proposal generation, financing, and reconciliation into a single platform.

With Ascend, NextGen was able to:

• Replace manual batch reconciliation with itemized, per-client payment tracking, matching what came in against what was owed in minutes instead of hours
• Generate invoices by uploading a PDF quote directly, rather than manually rebuilding each one
• Manage premium financing in the same dashboard as everything else, eliminating a separate third-party paperwork process entirely
• Maintain full ownership of the client relationship: Ascend never sends a payment reminder or notice without NextGen personally looping the client in first

5–10 hours saved every week

By eliminating manual batch reconciliation, PDF proposal editing, and separate financing paperwork, NextGen estimates reclaiming 5 to 10 hours a week.

$138K+ in gross premium processed, and growing

Since onboarding with Ascend in May 2026, NextGen crossed $138K in gross premium through Ascend in September 2026, on pace toward a longer-term goal of $1M.

93% of customers on autopay

Nearly all of NextGen's clients now pay automatically through Ascend, removing the need to manually chase down payments or reconcile who paid what by hand each month.

Support that earns trust

NextGen credits fast, reliable support as core to the experience, describing it as consistently a "10 out of 10" regardless of the issue, with the support team following up quickly whenever help is needed, rather than being left to sort things out on his own.