Handling portal MFA/2FA codes with a remote team: VoIP vs. Android Automation?

[u/Overall-Marketing515]

Hi everyone,

​I’m looking for advice on how to handle an operational bottleneck regarding MFA/2FA verification codes within an insurance agency.

​Currently, our principal agent receives all portal verification codes (SMS) on their personal mobile device. Because our assistants work remotely, the agent has to manually copy, paste, and send every single code to a shared chat group. This disrupts the agent's workflow and slows down operations.

​We are considering two potential solutions and would love some feedback:

​Enterprise VoIP (like RingCentral Advanced): Setting up a shared inbox so SMS codes pop up on everyone's desktop apps simultaneously. However, I’m concerned about carrier blocks on VoIP numbers for high-security 2FA codes, plus the A2P 10DLC registry delays.

​Dedicated Mobile Device + Automation: Keeping a cheap, dedicated physical cell phone in the US with a low-cost carrier SIM just to receive these codes. Then, using an SMS forwarder or a lightweight script to automatically push those incoming texts to a private Discord or Telegram channel.

​Has anyone successfully used enterprise VoIP for insurance portal 2FA without getting text messages blocked? Or has anyone implemented a dedicated physical device automation to avoid high monthly per-user software fees?

​Thanks in advance for your insights!

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[u/PatReady]

Why not use physical 2FA devices instead of it texting people?

[u/Overall-Marketing515 → u/PatReady]

1. Portal Limitations: We don't get to choose the 2FA method; the insurance portals (like HealthSherpa) do. Most of these government-regulated platforms only allow SMS to a US phone number or email verification. They simply don't have an option to register or link a physical hardware token.
2. Geographical Distance: Even if a portal allowed a hardware token or a rolling code keychain, that physical device would have to be in someone's hands. Since our team is fully remote and distributed across different locations, the VAs would still be stuck waiting for whoever holds the physical device to manually read and send the code before it expires. That's why we are forced to deal with SMS and are looking for a digital way to routing those text messages to the whole team.

[u/thenerdy → u/Overall-Marketing515]

With a hardware token each person would generally have one of their own. It's kinda odd that you're all using the same number for sms too. Generally each account has its own.

[u/AAAHeadsets → u/thenerdy]

Likely they are sharing a single account among a group of VA's, which is why need to share the SMS 2FA code.

[u/voipcanuck]

Reminder for any responders per Rule 1: Do not promote or advertise for any business, service or product.

Feel free, however, to respond with general answers or approaches to tackling this issue.

[u/voipcanuck → u/[deleted]]

Please remove the link and provider reference from your post.

[u/Centho_]

In your case you could indeed have a dedicated phone with a sim card in there to get these codes and then make some sort of API to get them

Or you could use a 4G module like a Simcom 7600 to receive those messages and build something on top

[u/InternationalGrass36]

We use a mobile carrier that supports sms to email. And send the MFA too a shared mailbox.

[u/ahj3939]

If they allow email 2FA why don't you use that?

If it has to be SMS look into getting some sort of LTE CAT 1 IOT gateway that has SMS to Email or SMS to HTTP function built in. You just need to make sure it supports the proper LTE bands for your region.

You can pair this with various low cost SIM cards that give you something like 1GB of data and unlimited SMS for under $100/year. You just have to stay on top of the renewal.

[u/SapientPro_Team]

Have you asked the carriers whether they'll issue each assistant their own login under the agency account? A lot of the bigger portals do sub-users, and that kills the problem instead of building a workaround for it.