For dozens of years, agents and carriers have failed to see eye-to-eye when it comes to technologies that enable them to interact with each other more efficiently–and judging from recent comments, that trend seems likely to continue.

If you want to find out how carriers and agents feel about their technology relationship, the answers will often depend on whom you ask. While agents tend to see the proverbial glass as half-empty or half-full at best, some insurers seem to think it is overflowing.

“I think agents feel there has been slow progress being made in a number of areas,” according to Jeff Yates, executive director of the Agents Council for Technology, in Alexandria, Va. “There is extreme frustration with the rating area, because they're tired of proprietary Web sites.”

He added, however, that there have been some encouraging improvements. “There's a higher level of cooperation between agents and carriers and vendors working on technology initiatives like commercial download,” he pointed out.

“If you ask the average agent today, they are extremely frustrated about the rating area,” he said. “They feel we have taken a step backward. Now, they have to log on to each company Web site and do multiple data entry. Meanwhile, the technology all around them is improving (in areas like billing technology), but in the rating area there is no progress.”

According to Mr. Yates, the use of third-party underwriting information has made the process more complicated. He cited utilization of DMV information and credit scores, noting it is primarily the latter that has “put a monkey wrench into the works.”

Another area where there has been progress is in commercial lines download, he said. While the early experience of agents was that their data was being overwritten, “the last couple of years there has been a major effort to improve the level of testing. That's where the opportunity for progress is,” he noted.

Mr. Yates pointed to a “big opportunity” for real-time, multiple-company rating. “This resonates with the grassroots agents,” he said. “There are good, encouraging signs we can actually make significant progress on this for agents over the next year.”

That progress, he added, could take the form of more real-time rating through agency management systems and more real-time capabilities available via comparative raters. “It's already starting to happen.”

On the other side of the relationship, ease of doing business is “very much on the radar screen of carriers,” he continued.

Carriers are working to get rid of “pain points” in the process, he noted–citing “frustration at the carrier level that agents aren't implementing new technologies for workflow and [for] real-time [transactions]. We tell agents that carriers are watching, so it's important to implement real-time when it becomes available.”

“My impression is that things have gotten better [between agents and carriers] from the communications standpoint on technology,” according to Stu Durland, vice president of The Durland Agencies, based in Warwick, N.Y. “The people that represent carriers that come to our office seem to be more knowledgeable. I see more well-rounded individuals coming in, where it used to be just a marketing person. They can talk about underwriting aspects of products and how it will interact with my system.”

He added that “we see that more with the regionals. They are in tune with the products and the technology. They understand when I talk real-time and [IVANS} Transformation Station," a software that allows smoother communication between agencies and their carriers.

The same is often not true, however, with national carriers, where expectations are higher, noted Mr. Durland, who is also a past president of ASCNet, one of the major agency management system user groups.

After asking one such company about when he could expect real-time transactions, Mr. Durland had a two-hour meeting with a carrier marketing representative on what was needed. "I ended up thinking, 'Don't they already know this? I am repeating myself a lot here,'" he said. "There was good communication, but why are we still having this communication?"

In another case, "a carrier gave us a real-time solution, then took it away because they were advancing their systems, but there was no date for when we would get it back," he said. "It gets a little frustrating with the larger carriers, but the regionals are implementing the technology. If companies are providing that kind of support, the independent agent is going to do business with them."

The toughest challenge with such technology, according to Mr. Durland, is the actual implementation. "Reps are not necessarily the right people to get things done. Users groups, etc. may have more force in getting change to occur," he said.

He noted his agency is doing real-time download with four commercial carriers--and despite some minor problems, things are improving on the commercial side. "But I have no personal lines rating in real-time, although they have some bridges out there. That's a little frustrating," he added.

Another problem is what Mr. Durland calls the "wait-and-see attitude." Both companies and agents want to wait and see how technology implementation will go before committing dollars and personnel, he explained. "The frustration is in changing that mindset. My thought is, just implement it--we're going to use it," he said.

Mr. Durland added that his own relationships with carriers are good, "because I know a lot of the automation contacts. They want to do the right thing, but they all have constraints--monetary issues, political issues. The bigger [an insurer is], the more people you have to convince that it's the right thing to do.”

Overall, Mr. Durland said he is optimistic about the future of the agency-carrier relationship–at least as far as technology goes. “I see it going in the right direction. It's going too slow, but it's going in the right direction. If you can make us more efficient, we're going to make you more money.”

From a carrier point of view, Jim Griesing, vice president of sales and market planning for The Hartford, said his company's technology relationship with independent agents is “good, and it continues to get better. Many agents are embracing the use of technology in working with our company. Carriers are making the quoting process faster and more precise, so it's not just a quote but a bindable quote.”

According to Mr. Griesing, carriers must eliminate redundancy of information in carrier systems that forces agents to submit duplicate input. “There needs to be fewer proprietary systems–making it more convenient for agents to interact with you,” he said. “We need to enable agencies to get a quote via their agency management systems.

Mr. Griesing said that at The Hartford, “we routinely talk with our agency partners and ask them what they need–that's certainly important. We're also on industry panels about technology and standards.”

He asserted that “automation and ease of doing business are at the core of agency-carrier relationships, particularly in the flow of businesses in personal lines and small commercial.”

However, he added, “agents need to embrace the technologies they have. They have to make sure they have trained their folks to take full advantage. They need to make it part of their workflows and business model.”

Jerry Fox, vice president of James M. King and Associates Inc. in Bloomington, Minn., sees a problem in communication.

“In general, I think there's a group of [insurers] that are listening to agents and a group that are not,” he explained. “The problem we're having is that agents as a group want real-time, connectivity to real-time and real-time quotes. We can share those ideas through ACT and AUGIE,” the latter being an umbrella organization of agency technology groups.

“The carriers go through preferred agents clubs and hear we want a Web site where we can get their information,” he continued. “So the companies say, 'We're listening to our big agent groups,' but the ones in the president's club that go to the golf tournaments are not the ones in the trenches. I always speak up, but I'm just one guy.”

According to Mr. Fox, “it's about 50-50″ in terms of the carriers that listen and those that do not. “The lower 50 percent is regional mutuals that can't afford to be part of getting the whole picture,” he noted. “ACT is too expensive for them to be involved in, and AUGIE, from a time standpoint, is too expensive. I don't think those are the save-all organizations, but they are a venue in which the companies can get a consistent voice from a group of agents in different systems, but with the same message.”

Mr. Fox added that “insurers need to hear it's not about Web sites, but it's about real-time transactions. We cannot continue to do business as we are–the independent agency system will fail. The customer is not going to be satisfied with the level of service we [currently] provide.”

Increasingly, he warned, future customers will be “technology-driven.”

In contrast, Patrick Gee, senior vice president of small commercial and personal lines operations for St. Paul Travelers, said “relationships between agents and carriers are as good as they have ever been from an automation perspective, and they're getting better. That doesn't mean they're perfect.”

He added that “we're extremely excited about our progress in the last few years on automation. Over the past three years, upward of 30-to-35 percent of service transactions have been initiated by agency management systems, whereas three years ago, it was virtually zero.” (That figure, he noted, is a composite between personal and commercial lines.)

“In the next year or two, we're going to expand our offerings by sending alerts to agents any way they want them,” he promised. “The industry will soon utilize connections between agency management systems and carriers to improve transactions.”

While others point to the lack of automation progress in rating, Mr. Gee asserted that “comparative rating in our industry is moving to real-time. That's important, because carrier products today are more complicated and more difficult to price. In the last year, virtually all comparative raters are coming through our gateways in real time to get quotes, so they don't have to manufacture rates any more.”

Where no comparative rater is used by an agency, Mr. Gee said his company has created the ability in personal lines for agents to bridge whatever information they choose from their management systems into the carrier platform in real-time, in order to fill in forms. “It saves a ton of redundant keying,” he noted.

Among the challenges facing carriers is improvement in the quote process, by allowing agents to use their agency management systems more, according to Mr. Gee, who conceded “that option is not fully worked through.”

He added that the industry also needs to maximize the automation in small- and middle-market quoting. He emphasized the importance of service transactions.

“For the first time, I hear that major agency management systems are building a catcher's mitt for claims download,” he said. “We're anxious to be a pitcher.”

Special Reports /

Agents, Insurers Still In Tech Tug Of War

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