The basic premise behind straight-through processing (STP) is insurance carriers are able to process policies through their systems untouched by human hands and without the intervention of human intelligence. It's a lovely concept and offers efficiencies for agents and carriers, but is it a goal worth striving for? Insurers on both the property/casualty side and the life/annuities side affirm it is but also will remind you automation can take them only so far within certain lines of business.

Lincoln Financial Group implemented straight-through processing last December for new business sent to the carrier electronically, according to Don Mockler, who leads Lincoln Financial's customer-facing operations areas with responsibility for new business, contact center, and operations services. "Over the course of the last year, we took some baby steps along the way where [the carrier's broker/dealers] had to key a few items into our system," he says. "Now, we are able to automate the last step so policies go directly into our policy system."

Lincoln Financial has been receiving electronic order entry from a number of key broker/dealers for more than three years, continues Mockler. Initially it started with the broker/dealers keying in data on their side and Lincoln rekeying the data because there was no bridge. "Over time we've had economies of scale in terms of what we were keying in electronically to make it worth it for us to make that investment to build the bridge between the two," he says.