AUGIE Set To Survey Agents On Tech

Orlando

Following a closed-door meeting held during the ASCnet 16^th Annual Education Conference here, the ACORD User Group Information Exchange (AUGIE) announced that in December it will initiate a survey of insurance agents to determine their technology wants and needs.

The announcement came at a press conference staged after the AUGIE meeting. The meeting itself, to which National Underwriter had originally been invited, was closed to the media only days before it was to take place.

AUGIE consists of agency management systems user groups, vendors and carriers.

According to Gregory Maciag, president of Pearl River, N.Y.-based ACORD, “The purpose of AUGIE is to gather information, share ideas and play an active role in setting an agenda for working together. Equally important, the group will partner with ACORD and our membersinsurers, vendors and associationsto shape the future of e-commerce for the insurance industry.”

At the press conference, Rick Gilman, vice president of ACORD, said the AUGIE group began working on the survey questions in April of this year, soliciting questions from some 500 vendors and carriers “asking what would they want to ask agents if they had a chance.”

The group got back nearly 200 suggested questions to agents, then narrowed the list down to 30 questions during a meeting in June, Mr. Gilman said. It then brought in “a market research firm” to develop an online survey based on those questions.

That online survey, in turn, was sent to “a select group” of 175 agents whose names had been submitted by the member user groups, Mr. Gilman explained. That effort brought back 80-plus responses that are being used to “validate” the questions.

“This is not meant to be statistically significant,” he noted. The idea, he added, is to develop a “comprehensive survey that will bring valuable information to AUGIE participants.”

At the beginning of December, AUGIE will launch its finely tuned online survey, which will be followed by focus groups, Mr. Gilman said.

“We would love to have the survey completed by the end of December,” he added. This would be followed by “public release” of a report on the results “in February.”

But another AUGIE participantPaul Pruett, vice president, e-business manager, strategic development, for Warren N.J.-based Chubb & Sonwarned that the group might have to push back that timetable in order to “get it right.”

Mr. Maciag agreed, noting that “Were all making very expensive decisions. There [are] too many generalizations out there. We need really good data. If we dont get this one right, actually, were dead in the water.”

Another press conference participant, Michael B. Hofmeister, president of the Columbus, Ohio-based National Association of SIS Partner Agents, emphasized that “the survey is one step. We have to validate AUGIE.”

Asked about what the next step for the group will be, ASCnet President Dana Nulty-Beals replied: “We dont know. The [survey] results will prioritize what we do next.”

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, November 5, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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AUGIE Set To Survey Agents On Tech

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