ACA Embraces AI to Create a Better Member Experience

As part of our ongoing efforts to continuously improve the member experience, ACA International is leveraging artificial intelligence technology to transform how our members access and use critical compliance resources. The association’s first major AI initiative focused on revolutionizing our popular State Guide product, with more innovations planned for 2025.

“ACA reflects its members, including in our quick adoption of AI to drive improvements,” said ACA CEO Scott Purcell. “We’re particularly proud of how quickly we’ve been able to deliver this significant enhancement to our members.”

Member-Driven Development

ACA conducted extensive member conversations to ensure the improvements to State Guide would meet your real-world needs. We gathered insights from both large and small member organizations to understand their unique challenges and requirements. The resulting features of the new State Guide directly reflect member feedback and priorities.

State Guide’s AI-Powered Upgrade

Working in partnership with Strategy3, an AI consulting company led by member Ray Cox, ACA has completely reimagined the State Guide experience. The enhanced tool now includes:

• An expanded, interactive table of contents with clickable links in each state chapter to help you navigate quickly to the content you need.
• More than 60 topical PDFs that aggregate state laws by topic for everything covered in State Guide’s state chapters.
• Dual-format Excel spreadsheets for flexible data analysis and user customization.
• AI-powered automatic updates across all topical PDFs and Excel output.
• Comprehensive “at-a-glance” state survey charts.

State Guide subscribers will continue to have access to monthly State Guide Cohort webinars led by ACA’s Compliance Team. These webinars include slide decks that break down new state laws and regulations and state-relevant judicial decisions. Recordings of these webinars and the associated slide decks can be reviewed at any time by State Guide subscribers.

State Guide streamlines your compliance efforts, enables quick access to relevant state laws, and helps generate customized compliance resources. Regular updates and efficient filtering capabilities save you time and can help reduce your risk. ACA’s Compliance Team, working in consultation with Andy Madden, ACA’s vice president of government & state affairs, does the heavy lifting of researching and keeping up with changes to state laws. The time you save in doing your own research will be time you can put toward running your business.

At the same time, State Guide provides an invaluable tool for demonstrating to clients and regulators alike your commitment to compliance and your investment in the tools needed to stay current in the dynamic state regulatory landscape.

“As far as I can tell, the next closest competitive product to this costs more than $10,000 a year,” ACA Senior Counsel Colin Winkler said in a recent Huddle webinar. “That’s an order of magnitude more expensive. So even though members need to purchase State Guide as an add-on to their ACA membership, it is a steal. It is an absolute steal.”

Looking Ahead: More AI Innovations Coming

This State Guide enhancement is just the beginning of ACA’s AI journey. Members can expect to see more AI-powered improvements throughout 2025, including improvements to search functionality and content accessibility.

“It’s an exciting time in our industry to have such a high-impact tool in AI to both reduce costs but also to create better outcomes,” Purcell said. “ACA will seek ways to use AI responsibly and to its fullest potential. Working with Ray Cox and his team at Strategy3 has been a great experience. Not only do they bring innovation on the bigger projects, but they’ve been great in teaching many ACA staff how to use these tools for efficiency and quality gains in much of our everyday work.”