Celebrating 80YearsBy Jeff Yates, executivedirector of the Agents Council for TechnologyFrom AA&B July 2009

As American Agent & Broker celebrates its 80thanniversary, it's a great time to take stock of the progressindependent agents have made with the technology that powers theiroffices. Technology progress can frustrate agents because of itscost and the length of time it has taken to improve. Remember"Paper-free in '83," or the promises to achieve SEMCI(single-entry, multiple company interface) in the '80s and'90s?

The good news is the kind of automation that agencies have aright to expect is finally starting to arrive. Many agencies arenow taking advantage of real-time technology to reduce the time forprocessing tasks and enhancing their bottom lines with moreproactive service and sales. Many of today's agencies are virtuallypaper-free in personal lines, and others are working on smallcommercial business now that carriers and vendors have improvedtheir commercial lines download times. The great progress beingmade with real time is putting independent agencies in strikingdistance of achieving the vision of SEMCI.

Agents'vision for carrier interface
A major breakthrough

In the 2008 IIABA Future One Agency Universe Survey, agenciesranked real-time billing, claims and policy inquiry as thetechnology having the greatest impact on their productivity. And itis no wonder: In January, the 2009 Real Time Campaign AgencySurvey, agents using real time (inquiries, endorsements, and/orquoting) reported saving 10 hours a month per employee on average.One agent calculated time savings equaling $3,000 annually perpersonal lines employee. Real-time quoting also is growing rapidlyin personal and commercial lines saving agents significant time andduplicate data entry.

The evolution of download
In 1988, agroup of savvy agents and carrier representatives under theauspices of the associations and ACORD stepped forward to spell outthe actual functions effective interfaces must possess from theagents' perspective. They formed the Interface Systems Requirements(ISR) panel, which made the crucial recommendation in 1990 thatdownload should be the starting point for current interfacedevelopment. This gave clear direction to interface development forcarriers and vendors that resulted in a proliferation of downloadimplementations. Personal lines download is one of the greatestsuccess stories to date in terms of the productivity enhancementsthat have resulted from it. Even today, agents encourage carriersto implement download first, then real time.

Commercial lines download is the next big area where carriers,vendors and indsutry groups are working to improve download qualityand reduce the overwriting of agency data. More than 42,000agent-carrier pairs that have implemented commercial linesdownload, an 18 percent increase over last year. Agents realizingsignificant savings using commercial lines download, particularlyfor small commercial lines, and agents are encouraged to takeanother look at it now that the quality has been improvedconsiderably.

The emergence of agency managementsystems
It started in the 1950s when vendors emergedto do agency accounting on a batch basis. The first agencymanagement systems developed from these roots, still focused onautomating the accounting function.

With the approval of ACORD standard applications, managementsystem vendors were able to create a policy and client data base soagencies could service clients from the system and use it as amarketing tool to cross sell. Vendors also were sensitive toagents' E&O risks and developed activity logs to track everytransaction performed by the system, also permitting the capture ofclient conversations and events. Most recently, vendors arefocusing on agent-carrier connectivity using tools such as realtime and download.

During this evolution, we also saw the introduction of Windows,color, e-mail and the laptop, which made these systems moreattractive and easier to use for agency principals and producers.Today, agency managers can generate invaluable management reportsfrom these systems to oversee their agency operations.

Although the promise of going "Paper-free in '83" nevermaterialized, today's agencies are increasingly electronic,eliminating paper wherever they can. The agency management systemacts as the agency's information hub, with the agency's othersystems, if needed, integrating with the management system as muchas possible. Thanks to the Internet, agencies no longer need tohave their agency management system on site. It can be housed atthe vendor, who is responsible for updates, maintenance and properback ups.

Agents once again have played a key role in the evolution of theautomation available to them by working with their vendors throughuser groups to provide continuous system improvements.

Agent advocacy at the industry level
In1999, IIABA created ACT to put a more consistent and permanentfocus on industry automation issues from the agents' perspective.The immediate catalyst was the impact the Internet was having onthe industry. At the first ACT meeting, carriers pleaded for newstandards based on XML (extensible markup language) fortransporting data across the Internet. Today, ACORD's XML standardsprovide the basis for the industry's real-time transactions. Sincethen, ACT has been involved in agent-carrier workflows in both thestandard and E&S markets, assessing societal and technologytrends, agency security, and online marketing opportunities(www.independentagent.com/act).

A key to ACT and AUGIE's success has been the level of carrierand vendor commitment to working together to further the agents'ease of doing business, which is greater than I have seen it in my34 years in the business. The coming together of the industry tocreate the Real Time/Download Campaign in 2007 has been hugelysuccessful in driving increased agent and carrier implementation ofreal time, and we hope to accomplish the same result withcommercial lines download. The campaign has also developedexcellent materials to assist agents with their real-time anddownload implementations ( www.getrealtime.org).