Case study
How a insurance agency built its back office through Global Squirrels
An independent personal- and commercial-lines insurance agency licensed in California and Arizona partnered with Global Squirrels to scale its remote workforce. Within roughly one year, the owner went from running the agency solo to managing three full-time remote employees, with plans for a fourth hire in the first quarter of the following year.
Executive Summary
An independently owned insurance agency licensed in California and Arizona reached a familiar inflection point. The owner, with 18 years in the industry, had built the agency from a one-person operation but was hitting a wall: new business, policy servicing, renewals, and back-office admin were all competing for the same set of hours.
After evaluating roughly a dozen staffing providers in a single week, the agency partnered with Global Squirrels. The decision turned on one thing: a single platform that handled sourcing, interviewing, onboarding, and payroll in one continuous motion, paired with candidates who already had insurance experience rather than generalist VAs needing weeks of foundational training.
The agency grew from one person to a four-person team (three remote employees plus the owner). Across that period, the platform’s resume, interview, and timesheet workflows saved roughly ten hours a week during active hiring cycles, support requests received one-to-two-hour responses during business hours, and payroll for the remote team ran smoothly enough that the owner’s own assistant volunteered praise for the experience. The owner has since referred two to three other business owners to Global Squirrels.
The challenge
Like many independently owned agencies, the business hit a ceiling fast. Selling new policies, servicing existing clients, chasing renewals, and managing back-office work all sat on the owner’s desk. Trying to do all of it solo was capping growth, and a previous attempt at hiring remote help directly – without a platform underneath it – had left gaps around onboarding, payroll, and continuity.
When the owner started looking for a more structured way to add capacity, the bar was high:
- Running a fast-growing book of business as a one-person agency, with no bandwidth to keep policy servicing, renewals, and admin moving at the pace new business demanded.
- Previous experience with directly hired remote help that lacked structure around payroll, compliance, and replacements when a hire did not work out.
- A noisy market of staffing agencies. Before choosing a partner, the owner spoke with roughly 10 to 12 different providers in the span of a single busy week.
- A real need for talent that already understands insurance, not generalist VAs who would require weeks of foundational training before becoming useful.
- Limited time to manage the hiring process itself, so interview scheduling, resume review, and timesheet handling all had to live inside a single, easy-to-use system.
The solution: Global Squirrels
After an extensive evaluation of roughly a dozen other providers, the agency chose Global Squirrels for one core reason: the platform made the entire remote-hiring lifecycle feel like one motion rather than half a dozen disconnected steps. What that looked like in practice:
- A curated shortlist of insurance-experienced candidates delivered within a couple of business days of the role being opened.
- Three pre-vetted candidates were interviewed in the same week, all of whom had direct, hands-on insurance backgrounds aligned to the agency’s workflow.
- A single self-serve platform to view resumes, schedule and conduct interviews, and approve weekly timesheets without juggling spreadsheets or third-party tools.
- Payroll, compliance, and statutory administration are handled entirely by Global Squirrels, removing those tasks from the owner’s plate.
- A responsive support team with email replies typically arriving in one to two business hours, plus proactive follow-up phone calls when a question needed more context.
- Flexibility to pause hiring during the busy holiday period and reopen a new requisition the moment training capacity opens up again.
The results
Within roughly a year of starting with Global Squirrels, the agency had moved from a one-person shop to a four-person operation (three remote employees plus the owner), with a fifth team member planned for January.
- Headcount grew from 1 to 3 remote employees in roughly 12 months, with a fourth hire planned for early in the new year.
- Approximately ten hours per week were reclaimed during the active hiring cycle thanks to the platform’s resume, interview, and timesheet workflows.
- Faster onboarding, because candidates arrived with insurance experience already in hand instead of requiring foundational training.
- A measurably more responsive support experience, with one-to-two-hour email response times during business hours and proactive callbacks for anything ambiguous.
- Smooth, predictable payroll for the remote team. The agency’s own remote employee independently described the payment experience as seamless.
Testimonial
Why agencies choose Global Squirrels
- A single platform to source, interview, onboard, and run payroll for remote talent.
- Curated profiles for niche or regulated industries, not generic VA pools.
- Hands-on customer success, with response times measured in hours, not days.
- Flexibility to scale headcount up – or pause – in line with the business cycle.
- A model that the agency’s own remote employee describes as smooth on the payroll side, which keeps the team focused on client work.
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