If we’ve learned anything over the years it’s that with technology anything is possible. That even extends to real time commercial download, a project near and dear to the hearts of ACORD leadership and AUGIE.

“The ACORD User Group Information Exchange (AUGIE) is part of the real-time campaign,” says Carolyn “Cal” Durland, director of member relations for ACORD. “[The industry] has had success with the personal lines and commercial lines can have the same functionality in their systems.”

One area of concern for agents has always been the level of involvement of the underwriting staff in the more complicated commercial lines, but Durland explains the message ACORD is trying to deliver to the industry is “data is data and it doesn’t matter how you collect it; it’s what you do with it after the fact.”

Durland doesn’t believe commercial lines download has to be limited to the small commercial lines. She believes real time can be achieved in the excess and surplus lines and with specialty lines.

“The message we are trying to communicate [to carriers] is let the agents be efficient on commercial lines the same way you let them be efficient on personal lines,” she says. “We still fight the battle of companies thinking they will be commoditized. An agent is going to [treat them as commodities] if they are doing comparison pricing for their customer. What we’re doing with AUGIE is to communicate that. ACORD standards are a way to be efficient and reduce costs.”

Ted Joyce, who is a member of AUGIE, is also a director of the Nexsure User Group and he points out all the major industry user groups are working in concert to cross some of the hurdles that are in the way.

“Even though we have different vendors, we all have the same type of issues,” says Joyce.

The issue as Joyce sees it always has been to get proper implementation of commercial download for the various carriers, whether they be the national carriers or regional carriers.

“Our download sessions we do are designed to help independent agencies understand that commercial lines download is available from a large number of companies and it is similar to personal lines download, which most [agents/brokers] are probably already doing,” says Joyce.

EASE OF BUSINESS

Nort Salz is president of the consulting firm Deep Customer Connections and a strong proponent of the issue. Over 50,000 agents have participated in his company’s research over the years and Salz maintains that 99 percent of the agents feel ease of doing business is critical in choosing which carrier to place the business with.

Salz has identified different factors that make up ease of doing business.

“Certainly this transactional thing—and commercial download is one piece of that—is important because the transactional efficiency of the whole process is critical to the agent’s productivity,” says Salz.

From the data he has compiled, Salz claims commercial lines agents want carriers to improve their responsiveness in underwriting.

“That requires some transactional things, like the technology tools that make commercial download possible and it requires a relationship,” says Salz. “Commercial lines are more complicated than personal lines and it takes more back and forth between the two sides, and trust and confidence between the agent and the carrier. There has to be collaboration there. What I see is the carrier needs to bring a balance of technology tools like commercial download—and that’s a critical one—along with the capacity to build and maintain relationships with agents.”

JUST TRY IT

For some reason, Joyce believes agencies have either an unwillingness to try it or an uneasy feeling about commercial download.

“In their mindset [commercial lines] is so different than personal lines, which is pretty cut and dried,” says Joyce. “The reality is commercial lines is not that much more difficult than the personal lines.”

The problem, in Joyce’s mind, is that when the first carriers tried to do commercial lines download there were a lot of errors made.

“Basically what you have is two systems—the agency system and the carrier system—trying to talk to each other,” he says. “In the commercial world the carriers didn’t seem ready and able to download as they were in the personal lines.”

When they first started commercial download, Joyce feels it was more of a nightmare than a dream come true.

“There was a lot of misinformation, a lot of stops, a lot of starts,” he says. “In many cases you could only do a couple of lines of coverage in the commercial world instead of doing many.”

Another issue proponents have faced is most of the carriers do download differently than their competitors, explains Joyce, whereas in personal lines they do much of the same processes the same way.

“Commercial got off to a rocky start, which is the kindest thing to say,” says Joyce. “The agents that experienced the initial efforts had a bad experience. Unfortunately in our world when an insurance agent has a bad experience they tend to be very vocal about it and tell as many people as they can about the bad experience. They also are like elephants—they never forget.”

Advocates have been fighting the mindset among agents that commercial lines is too complicated to do real time and personal lines is easy and simple. While conceding that the early adopters had many challenges, Joyce also realizes commercial carriers really weren’t ready to do download efficiently when they first started.

“There were hurdles that needed to be overcome,” he says. “It took [commercial lines carriers] a longer period of time to do that.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

Joyce sees three reasons why commercial lines download can be successful for carriers and agents today.

“One, you have more carriers doing it today than ever before, which is a plus,” says Joyce. “Two, you have carriers that have improved their technology and are better set up to handle it. Three, agents are starting to realize more carriers are doing it therefore the workflows are not nearly as defective so you don’t need as many different workflows. It’s grown to a point now where agents are more willing to try it. We have a number of success stories out there.”

So what is holding carriers back in commercial lines download? Salz believes change is very difficult for people and ultimately it comes down to individuals changing how they do business.

“It’s hard work,” says Salz. “It’s not the slam dunk it would appear to be.”

Carriers need the technology in place, but also need to understand—not only in transactional detail but in personal detail—what it is the agents are going through when they are trying to do a piece of work.

“Too often, the people that are designing and building systems haven’t really spent time sitting in an agent’s chair,” says Salz. “The agents don’t care about the tools. They care about getting the work done. In research we’ve done with agents, we see out of 11 factors technology is actually rated fifth or sixth in importance. What the agents really care about is underwriting responsiveness. For a carrier to be responsive in underwriting they have to have good technology tools—that’s what makes it work. But that’s not what the agents care about, so there’s a disconnect there.”

The next step as Durland visualizes it is to get carriers and technology vendors that are interested in commercial lines download connected with ACORD.

“The one thing we don’t want them to do is go it alone,” she says. “ACORD has resources and with the ACE program we have additional resources to help insurers with implementation. It’s not just about convincing them to do this it’s helping them implement the standards.”

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AUGIE Members Among Industry Leaders Behind Implementing Commercial Download

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