Agent Survey Raps Proprietary Systems

By Ara C. Trembly, NU Techology Editor

NU Online News Service, May 21, 11:44 a.m. EST, Orlando?A major technology usage survey unveiled here has confirmed the conventional wisdom that agents don't like proprietary carrier systems and don't appreciate duplicate data entry.

The long-awaited ACORD USER Groups Information Exchange findings, which were disclosed in a preview, also revealed the latest agent spending patterns and broadband choices.

"One of the most surprising things was how so much of it wasn't that surprising," said Rick Gilman, vice president of Pearl River, N.Y.-based ACORD, who conducted a briefing yesterday afternoon on the AUGIE results during the ACORD Technology Conference here.

Mr. Gilman said AUGIE is "still in the process of distilling" information from some 9,000 agency personnel who took the 45-minute survey. He added that he hopes to put the full results, including raw data, out to the industry by the end of June.

One area that did evoke some surprise among a few audience members was how respondents said their agencies budgeted for technology. According to AUGIE, 48 percent of respondents said their agencies pay for technologies as needed, while 41 percent said it is part of the annual budget, and 11 percent "didn't know." "AUGIE believes that budgeting for technology should be a matter of course," Mr. Gilman stated.

Another area that surprised some audience participants was that 81 percent of respondents said their agencies have broadband Internet connections instead of dial-up. Thirteen percent said they were using dial-up modems, while 6 percent reported they had no Internet connection.

Mr. Gilman said the survey showed that 45 percent of agencies doing $150,000 a year or less in business use dial-up connections. He also noted that larger agencies were more likely to have their own Web sites.

Asked about their biggest challenges in technology, 91 percent of respondents predictably said that learning and using an insurance company's proprietary systems was at the top of the list.

Mr. Gilman added that 37 percent said a significant challenge was the time and expense involved in keeping up with emerging technologies, while 15 percent cited time and expense for education and training related to technology.

Mr. Gilman noted that as the size of the agency increased, the need to educate and train become a more important challenge.

Top among interface challenges were proprietary carrier systems (48 percent) and duplicate data entry (29 percent), Mr. Gilman reported.

Respondents said the biggest time wasters are duplicate data entry (50 percent), proprietary systems (28 percent), and manual verification of upload and download (11 percent), said Mr. Gilman.

When asked how carriers should spend their technology dollars, a majority of survey respondents said the money should go toward establishing single-entry transactions and "away from company-specific, duplicate entry," Mr. Gilman reported.

Would real-time transactions help agency workflow? According to Mr. Gilman, 90 percent of respondents strongly agree or somewhat agree that it would.

While he conceded that agents expressed many "wishes," Mr. Gilman said not all of the wished-for changes are "doable" at present. One such wish he cited is real time, Web-based comparative rating, which he called "not realistic" at the moment.

For the full version of Mr. Trembly's report read NU's May 27 print edition.

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Agent Survey Raps Proprietary Systems

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