Most agencies do not go looking for a new IT provider because the help desk is slow. They go looking because something outside the agency asked a question nobody could answer. A carrier sent a security addendum. A commercial client attached a questionnaire to a renewal. The agency’s own cyber insurer asked what controls are in place before quoting. Or a New York license raised a regulation that does not care how small the office is.
WheelHouse IT is built for the agency that has to answer those questions in writing.
An insurance agency looks like a small professional office and is not one. It holds Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver license numbers, medical questionnaires on life and health business, and loss histories that describe a client’s worst year. It hands that data to carriers, wholesalers, and premium finance companies as a matter of routine. And it runs on a platform the agency did not choose and cannot leave quickly.
A generalist provider treats it as email, laptops, and a file server. What it misses is that the agency’s security posture is a commercial document. It gets attached to renewals, quoted by its own cyber underwriter, and in New York, examined.
We assign every client a pod, which is the dedicated support team that owns the account. Same engineers, same team manager, month after month. They learn how the agency management system connects to everything else and which systems cannot be taken down during a renewal window.
The Questions Come From Outside the Agency.
If your agency holds a New York insurance license, you are a Covered Entity under the New York Department of Financial Services cybersecurity regulation, 23 NYCRR Part 500. The regulation reaches agents and brokers, not only carriers.
The limited exemption in section 500.19(a) is narrower than most agency principals expect. It applies only if the entity meets one of these:
| Test | Threshold |
|---|---|
| Employees and independent contractors, including all affiliates | Fewer than 20 |
| Gross annual revenue | Less than $1,000,000 |
| Total assets | Less than $25,000,000 |
An agency of twenty or more people does not clear the first test. Revenue and assets are calculated across affiliates and across all operations, which catches multi-entity agency groups that assumed each entity was measured on its own.
The regulation asks for things that are either documented or they are not: multifactor authentication, an asset inventory, access reviews, a written incident response plan, encryption of nonpublic information, and retention of audit trails. All of it is the kind of thing an agency discovers it does not have on the day somebody asks.
In Florida the question comes from somewhere else. Florida has not adopted the NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law that twenty-eight other jurisdictions have. A Florida agency answers to its carriers, its commercial clients, and its own cyber and errors and omissions underwriters instead, and those parties increasingly ask the same questions the regulation asks.
An agency licensed in both states is running one office to a written standard and one office to whatever its trading partners require. We treat that as one environment with one set of controls, documented once, so the answer is the same whoever asks.
The agency management system is the agency. Policies, activities, attachments, commission records, and the audit trail of who touched what all live there. Whether it runs in a carrier-hosted cloud, a vendor cloud, or a server in the back office changes almost every IT decision that follows.
What we do around it:
We work with the platform where it lives. Moving it is a decision the agency makes on its own timeline, not a condition of getting support.
An agency file is a complete identity package. Name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, driver license, vehicle and property detail, and on life and health business, medical history. It is worth more than a credit card number because it does not expire.
We build the controls as categories, not product names:
WheelHouse IT has completed a SOC 2 examination, audited against AICPA trust services criteria by an independent CPA firm. That is relevant here for a specific reason: your agency will at some point be asked who verified your provider’s controls, and the answer should not be your provider.
Every client is assigned a pod, which is the dedicated support team that owns the account. The same engineers and the same named team manager, month after month, rather than whoever is next in a queue.
Reaching the team works four ways: phone, email, the ticket portal, and Microsoft Teams. Behind all four is the 24/7 internal Network Operations Center. Our measured average call wait is 52 seconds, our measured average ticket resolution is 29.6 minutes, and customer satisfaction runs over 95%. These are reported averages from our own service data rather than service-level targets.
Our platform shows open tickets, project status, onboarding and offboarding progress, and environment health in real time, so you are not asking for a status update on a Monday.
The rest of the picture: 60+ IT professionals across the Fort Lauderdale, New York, and Orlando offices, clients in 18+ states and Puerto Rico, and fixed monthly pricing. New client agreements run month to month, with no multi-year commitment.
WheelHouse IT is ranked No. 50 on the 2026 Channel Futures MSP 501, an independent ranking based on audited operational and financial data with no payment to apply or place. This is the seventh consecutive year on the list.
If you have an internal IT person already, that arrangement is co-managed IT services and runs as one of two programs. Comprehensive means every user reaches WheelHouse IT directly. Foundational means your internal team stays the face of IT while WheelHouse IT owns infrastructure and security behind them.
52 sec.
Avg. call wait
29.6 min.
Avg. ticket time
60+
IT professionals
>95%
Satisfaction rating
25 years. Privately owned. No private equity.
It applies to agencies and brokers. Any entity operating under a New York Insurance Law license is a Covered Entity under 23 NYCRR Part 500. The limited exemption in section 500.19(a) is available only to entities with fewer than 20 employees and independent contractors including affiliates, or under $1,000,000 in gross annual revenue, or under $25,000,000 in total assets. An agency of twenty or more people does not meet the first test.
Not one specific to insurance data. Florida has not adopted the NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law, which twenty-eight other jurisdictions have adopted as of the NAIC’s August 2025 brief. In practice, Florida agencies still get asked the same questions, just by carriers, commercial clients, and their own cyber and errors and omissions underwriters rather than by a regulator.
Yes. That is usually the first thing we do. A questionnaire is a request for facts about multifactor authentication coverage, backup and restore testing, access reviews, encryption, and incident response. We document the current state, tell you plainly where the gaps are, and close them in an agreed order rather than telling you everything is fine.
No. What runs it changes what we do around it, not whether we will support it. We work with the platform where it lives, and we make the network path and the integrations part of what is monitored rather than only the application itself.
Yes. That arrangement is co-managed IT services. Scope boundaries are written down, so it is clear which side owns patching, which side owns escalation, and where the handoff is. It tends to be the right fit when there is one internal technical person who has become a single point of failure.
A fixed monthly fee based on the number of users and the scope of services, month to month. You hold your own Microsoft licensing in your own name and we do not mark it up. We do not quote a price before discovery, because a number produced before anyone has looked at the environment is a guess.
More questions are answered on our FAQ page.
A network risk assessment. We document what you have, what is exposed, and what needs attention first, and you keep the findings. It produces a picture of the environment, not a price. Pricing follows discovery and comes in a proposal.
If a questionnaire or a renewal is already on your desk with a date on it, say so when you call and we will start there.
Florida (954) 474-2204 | New York (516) 536-5006
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