Agents Warm Up (Slowly) To Tech Adding mobile technology to laptops and other electronic devices allows insurance agents to improve their efficiency significantly, agents and executives in the industry say.

“If Im in a brokers office and we had a complex case, we used to have to return to the office and get back to him later, or else ask the broker to come up to our office to work out the figures,” said Doug Mishkin, president, Algren Associates Inc., a New York-based agency.

Now, with a laptop and a cellphone modem, the same agent can extract the needed information from his companys database right in the brokers office, he said.

“Mobile technology allows them to provide quotes on the spot rather than meeting with the broker, compiling information, going back to the office, going to different carriers for quotes, then e-mailing the information to the broker or going out to see him again,” said Mr. Mishkin.

“Using a laptop, a complex case might take an agent five minutes, including getting quotes from different carriers,” said Mr. Mishkin, who uses a Dell laptop.

Mr. Mishkin often uses a wireless modem to connect his laptop to the Internet when with a broker.

Also, he noted, “some brokers use a wireless modem to pull up insurance quotes from our Web site.”

However, not every agent shares his enthusiasm about mobile technology, he added.

“I dont think too many of our agents are using it as much as they should be,” he said, noting that his agency has approximately 200 independent agents.

As for personal digital assistants, Mr. Mishkin finds their usefulness limited mostly to scheduling appointments.

“Theres not a lot of insurance-related software for PDAs,” he said.

He added that he has been resisting tying his Palm Pilot to a cellular modem.

“Its enough to have people calling me on my cellphone all day,” he said. “I dont know if I want my e-mail attached to my hip.”

But he foresees being forced to do so eventually, as more brokers and agents use mobile devices.

Charles Burnham, CEO of Burnham Insurance Group, Battle Creek, Mich., also reports that many of his agencys producers find they can live without mobile technology, even though they travel extensively.

Still, a growing corps of his companys agents find they can do their jobs more effectively by connecting their company-supplied laptops with a wireless modem.

“Primarily, they are using it to access our office system, so they can get specific customer information or premium quotes,” he said.

Mr. Burnham said mobile technology is well worth its cost, because it provides remote access to e-mail and instant access to customer information.

“Plus its a great way to communicate as managers to pull our people together for meetings,” he noted. “Its much easier to broadcast e-mails to agents, to let them know developments in the business or any number of management issues we want to cover with them.”

For agents who work for Burnham in remote or home offices, laptops with mobile technology are almost de rigeur, he added.

“Its a way to make sure everyone can access information efficiently, especially when you have multiple offices. Its just a much more effective way to do business and provide service to customers.”

Burnham provides its producers with Dell laptops but leaves it up to them to them to buy their own PDAs. Mr. Burnham himself uses a Palm Pilot.

Ed Higgins, president of the Thousand Islands Agency, Clayton, N.Y., said some of his agents have bought PDAs equipped with digital cameras to take photographs to facilitate property risk underwriting or to help expedite clients accident claims.

Although wireless connections are not yet available in his area, his agents use Dell notebooks equipped with universal serial bus (USB) connections so they can plug in their Dell scanners to copy documents and store them for later transmission to the agency. He expects to soon upgrade his agency to faster IBM notebooks or newer Dell models.

Some of Mr. Higgins agents complete clients insurance applications with their notebooks and e-mail them to underwriters to speed up processing time, he added.

“Every time you can take an application and start processing it on your notebook, you save input and conversion time when you get back to the office,” Mr. Higgins said. “Its all about saving time and decreasing errors, because you only put in the data once at the point of information gathering. Youre not handing it off to someone else who might make a mistake. But it also makes you more accountable, because if something goes wrong, you cant shift the blame.”

Mr. Higgins uses his own notebook to download his agencys daily transaction log when hes out of town.

“I can be as far away as Hawaii and retrieve the log to see everything that happened in the office that day,” he said. “Its a great way to maintain control.”

Erin L. Tegnerud, a Farmers Insurance agent in Burlingame, Calif., said mobile technology allows her to use her IBM ThinkPad to get business done right in clients homes or offices.

Using a wireless Internet connection, she can log onto her carriers mainframe to obtain instant quotes and help clients see the impact of proposed policy changes.

The biggest benefit of mobile technology is increased sales, Ms. Tegnerud said, because with direct access to her carrier, she doesnt have to guess the answers to customers questions.

Trevor Thomas is an assistant editor for NUs Life & Health/Financial Services Edition.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, July 14, 2003. Copyright 2003 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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Agents Warm Up (Slowly) To Tech

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