Case Study: USDA Risk Management Agency achieves faster indemnity payments and modernized escrow processing with Appian

USDA - Customer Case Study

The United States Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency (USDA RMA) manages the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation and oversees crop insurance covering billions in annual liability for American farmers and ranchers. RMA’s legacy Escrow payment system—critical for processing roughly $13 billion in indemnities over three years with peak weeks exceeding $500 million—lacked flexibility, visibility, and ease of use, creating delays and inefficiencies during high-volume payment periods.

RMA implemented the Appian application platform in a cloud environment and adopted an internal “RMAgile” development approach to re-engineer Escrow payments. The solution improved program visibility and data transparency, cutting Escrow transaction and payout times to about three days versus several weeks, and delivered 110% of planned functionality at 90% of planned cost; it was also RMA’s first PaaS-deployed and social-interface financial application.

USDA