For at least the past 25 years, the Holy Grail for many in a property-casualty insurance industry desperate for greater operating efficiencies through standardization and technology has been single-entry, multiple-company interface.

The quest continues, with SEMCI transactions still coming in more of a trickle than a flood for the majority of independent agencies and their carriers.

The latest effort to accelerate the move to SEMCI was the launch last spring of the industry's most ambitious effort yet--the "Get Real Time" campaign--by a coalition of industry players, including agent associations, agency management system user groups, insurance carriers, tech vendors and the industry's standards organization, ACORD.

The campaign features an animated clock named "Eddie" (roughly short for "Ease Of Doing Business"). The goal is to raise awareness and use of "real-time" technologies among agents and their carriers to help save both time and money.

The parties involved know it will take more than a cute cartoon mascot, however, to get the job done.

The goal is to double the number of real-time transactions from 20,000 per business day back in March (a relatively tiny percentage of the industry's daily traffic) by the end of 2008.

The campaign was announced at a press conference in late April during the Independent Agents and Brokers of America's annual Legislative Conference and Convention in Washington, D.C.

Cal Durland, a facilitator of the ACORD-User Group Information Exchange--better known as AUGIE--and a real-time campaign leader, explained that the idea is agents "should not have to think twice about using real time. Our aim is to make it part of the normal workflow."

"We are pushing this as a priority," added another campaign leader, Jeff Yates, executive director of the Agents Council for Technology, an affiliate of IIABA. "But the biggest problem is getting the attention of agency principals to realize that by using real time, it will free up time to do other things in the agency."

The campaign has put together an impressive Web site--www.getrealtime.org--to help everyone get on board and overcome any problems or fears that arise.

Among its many resources, the site includes the "Independent Agent's Real-Time Implementation Guide," providing a step-by-step outline for making real changes in an agency's standard operating procedure.

The problem in making real time the rule rather than the exception is twofold.

o Carriers are fearful of seeing their products commoditized, so they hesitate about making it easier for agents to shop electronically purely on price. Some wonder if lowering technological hurdles could be their undoing in a competitive market.

o Unaware agencies do not realize the real-time capabilities many already have at their fingertips, or are ignorant of how to take advantage of the technology involved.

Ironically, Mark Ruquet reported earlier this year that "carrier technology executives describe a Catch-22 situation where upper management would not approve the expenditures to build, expand and improve real-time access systems until they see a greater demand from agents for such services."

At the same time, however, he added, "producers and their support staff are not inclined to use real-time technology regularly until the carriers provide more such services."

"It's important that independent agents start using technology to become as efficient as they can be in their agencies," according to Brady Polansky, director of agency operations for the Ohio insurer Westfield Group. "It's a win-win-win for all participants."

Will "Eddie" and the efforts of all those committed to this latest quest for the industry's Holy Grail help convince the vast majority of agents and carriers to hop on the real-time bandwagon?

Only time will tell.

Special Reports /

#8: Real-Time Campaign: It's Now Or Never!

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