Case Study

How a National Insurance Carrier Got Ahead of Auto-Renewals Nobody Was Watching

Fast Facts

Industry: National high-net-worth personal lines insurance carrier
Legal headcount: A small legal team led by the Associate General Counsel
Contract volume: About 800 vendor agreements
Tools before: No central system
Trigger: A new CIO flagged auto-renewals and price escalations buried in contracts nobody was watching

The Challenge

Nobody was watching the contracts.

A national high-net-worth personal lines insurance carrier, serving an affluent customer base across multiple states. Insurance is largely an IT business, built on a dense network of technology vendors, service providers, and data partners. Matt, the company’s Associate General Counsel, owns the contract management function.

The carrier had hundreds of active vendor agreements with their own renewal terms, escalation clauses, and service commitments, and no central system to track any of it. Renewals slipped past unnoticed. Price escalations rolled through without a second look. When something needed attention, it landed on the legal team because no one else had visibility into the agreements.

When a new Chief Information Officer joined the company, he flagged the contract-management problem immediately and asked Matt to find a platform that could fix it.

Matt had been through full-scale CLM implementations before. He knew what most vendors ask for: a multi-year commitment to a fully featured platform, priced on the assumption that a dedicated implementation team will stand it up from day one. That model doesn’t fit a small legal team trying to make a risk-management case to leadership.

We needed a system to get ahead of surprise price escalations and auto-renewals buried in contracts nobody was watching. ContractSafe gave us that visibility on day one.

Matt Associate General Counsel

ContractSafe's Solution

Visibility for legal. Self-service for everyone else.

ContractSafe’s tiered pricing was the difference between getting the platform approved and not. The carrier started at the entry tier, focused the initial rollout on centralizing vendor agreements, and has upgraded with every annual renewal as usage has expanded.

ContractSafe lets you start at a tier that works for your organization and grow into more features over time. Most CLMs force you to buy everything on day one. ContractSafe doesn’t. That’s the only reason we got the platform approved.
— Matt, Associate General Counsel

With unlimited users on every ContractSafe plan, access stopped being a cost decision. The carrier enabled single sign-on and configured folder-level permissions so each department sees only the contracts relevant to its work. Marketing sees its 50 vendor agreements. Other teams see theirs. Nobody sees the full portfolio unless they need to.

That permission model is what turned ContractSafe into a self-service system. People outside legal now own their own vendor relationships, find their own contracts, and route fewer requests back to Matt’s desk. The contracts that used to sit unwatched are now watched by the teams that actually use them.

How ContractSafe helps the carrier show each department only its own contracts

Matt sets folder access levels by department. Sensitive folders, like HR's, stay limited to the people who need them. Employees sign in with single sign-on. Someone in marketing sees the marketing department's 50 contracts, not all 800, opens the contract record and finds what they need.

ContractSafe lets us give each department access to only the contracts relevant to their work. Our marketing team sees their 50 vendor agreements instead of all 800. They actually engage with it. That’s what makes a CLM work across a company.
— Matt, Associate General Counsel

About ContractSafe

ContractSafe covers the whole contract lifecycle, from intake and approvals to e-signature, deadline alerts and reminders, reporting and AI extraction, with the complete set on the Maximize plan. Custom intake forms feed templates that populate a first draft, comments with user tagging and approval sequences carry it through review, and ContractSafe eSign or the DocuSign integration collects signatures. Quick fixes happen with in-app editing, and bigger edits open in Word Online or desktop Word for changes and comments, then save back to ContractSafe as the updated version. Every plan includes unlimited users, onboarding and document migration with no implementation fee.

Rollout & Results:
A platform that earned its renewal every year

“Definitely go with ContractSafe. It just works. Like Apple, it does what it’s supposed to do, every time. That’s what you want from a CLM.”

— Matt, Associate General Counsel

One searchable home for every vendor agreement

The carrier's vendor and partner agreements now live in a single system with consistent tagging, clear ownership, and the right access for the people who need it.

Self-service adoption across the entire company

Matt owns the ContractSafe platform internally and rarely gets called on by other teams. When non-legal staff need a contract, they log in, find it, and move on. Contract management has shifted from “something for legal to handle” to something teams manage themselves.

Tier upgrades that track real value

The tiered adoption model that worked on day one keeps working. The company has expanded into intake forms, advanced workflows, and broader feature usage with every annual renewal. Each upgrade has been easy to justify because the prior tier had already earned its keep.

Vendor stability that other software companies can’t match

Matt has watched other software vendors get acquired and rebranded so many times he’s lost track of who he’s paying. ContractSafe has stayed the same company with the same product and the same commitment throughout the engagement.

Customer support that moves fast when it matters

On the rare occasions Matt has needed ContractSafe’s support team, the response has been immediate and hands-on. In one instance, a misconfigured form was diagnosed and resolved the same day.

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“We wanted something that was easy-to-use, that was the most important thing that we were looking for. We’ve chosen the right platform with ContractSafe and we’ve gotten a lot of compliments. Whenever you roll out any new program, you expect some constructive criticism but all we’ve gotten are kudos.”

"ContractSafe has been an amazing enabler, helping us automate other processes and level up our ability to manage an increasing volume of highly custom customer engagements."

"ContractSafe has been a lifesaver to our company. We finally have a central location to store and keep track of our contracts. Uploading documents is a simple process and the search feature is a lifesaver. Everything is organized and easy to find, and the renewal reminders help us keep on top of any upcoming expiring contracts. Their customer support is excellent.