The leaders of the IIABA's Agents Council for Technology (ACT)and ACORD's User Group Information Exchange (AUGIE) recentlyconcluded joint planning sessions and agreed to work together toadvance four important industry priorities in 2013: ID Federation,real time, e-signatures, and client self-service capabilities.

“Carriers and vendors frequently ask the agents to identifytheir key technology-related priorities that they would like to seethe whole industry get behind and adopt,” says Jim Armitage, ACTchairman and vice president of Arroyo Insurance in Arcadia, Calif.“We have now done that and encourage industry leaders to supportthese priorities and implement them.”

ACT and AUGIE have worked together on numerous issues in recentyears and this recent effort is part of that continuingpartnership.

“The last five years have brought enormous improvements inagency and carrier efficiency and customer service, because we haveall worked together to streamline workflows and incorporateimproved technologies,” adds Lisa Goth, AUGIE's February meetingrotational chair and vice president of the Charles P. Leach Agencyin New Bethlehem, Pa. “It is now time to build on theseaccomplishments and put our distribution system in an even strongerposition for the future.”

The four key priorities the AUGIE and ACT leaders urge theindustry to work together on to implement in 2013 are:

• To support the ID Federation and movement to federated digitalidentities to replace passwords. Efforts are underway to encouragevendors to become identity providers and the carriers to supportthe initiative. The development of an effective digital identityinfrastructure is also likely to increase agency use of real timeand enable agencies to provide greater customer functionalitythrough the agency website, such as to make a payment.
• To increase agent and carrier adoption of Real Time. The groups are encouraging carriers tobuild out their transactions following the industry recommended workflows, so that agencies willhave a consistent experience across their carriers. This includesincreasing the use of real time for commercial business, includingprogram and E&S business, and supporting the all-industry RealTime Day to be held April 9.
• To encourage agencies to incorporate e-signature tools into their client workflows andcarriers to support their agencies employing these tools. Thegroups also are seeking integration of e-signature technologieswith the agency management systems.
• To enhance agencies' ability to offer clients self servicecapabilities through the agency website which integrate withcarrier functionality, such as to make a payment.

“In addition to advocating for these industry priorities, bothACT and AUGIE will put greater focus on achieving successfulindustry implementations of the recommendations that come out ofour groups,” says Cal Durland, ACORD director of member relationsand AUGIE facilitator. “We will ask our working groups to validatetheir recommendations with a larger audience, encourage proof ofconcepts and develop timelines to set industry expectations.”

The ACT and AUGIE leadership will continue to meet quarterly andreview the progress on these industry priorities.

“Another outcome of our joint planning sessions was tocoordinate the agendas between our two organizations so that theindustry does not duplicate its efforts,” adds Jeff Yates, ACTexecutive director. “Each of our organizations has a number ofadditional initiatives that we each will be pursuing, but wethought it was important for our two groups to work together onthese four key priorities in an effort to get the whole industrybehind them and to achieve actual implementations in 2013.”