There are three phases of what Celent senior analyst Jeff Goldberg calls "producer portal maturity." In his new study, "The Ideal Producer Portal," Goldberg explains phase one is adopting the technology as the cost of doing business. The second stage for carriers goes to a higher level–developing a competitive portal. The third and final phase is to make the portal an industry differentiator.

Goldberg believes the bulk of carriers–particularly large carriers–currently fall into the competitive portal stage. "Smaller carriers have not put as much investment in their portals and are using them more as informational sources," he says. "That's more of the cost-of-doing-business phase."

Celent's e-business trends reports bear this out, according to Goldberg. "The larger insurers tend to put more money into their portals and not just because they have bigger budgets," he says. "A larger percentage of their IT budget goes into portals."

The good news for agents is the insurance industry is past the days when consultants such as Celent were encouraging insurers to think about developing a portal. "Small carriers are getting past that initial phase and moving into the secondary phase," he says.

Goldberg doesn't put the blame for any industry reluctance on money. "I think these decisions reflect priorities and demand," he says. "Demand is the biggest thing that pushes carriers forward, and that demand [for producer portals] is coming from agents more than from the consumer. Those with independent agent channels tend to be a little bit ahead of the curve."

The carrier's relationship with its agents is a huge factor in what carriers do with portals. Goldberg points out smaller carriers and the independent agents that sell their products have a more personal relationship, so having a producer portal isn't quite as critical a demand as it would be with larger carriers.

In terms of priority, Goldberg contends much depends on whether the carrier is pushing resources toward the Web channel or elsewhere. "It takes some carriers a little while [to make decisions on portals]," he says. "I don't want to insist everyone has to go down this route, but at this point, it is very important. A carrier not putting out at least some investment is going to suffer."

Goldberg sees a number of missteps when establishing a portal. For example, insurers with poor back-end systems may make a large investment in their agent portal. "It's a way of putting lipstick on a pig–a nice interaction point with agents even when their back-end systems are really slow," he says.

Two major issues agencies deal with are proprietary carrier systems and multiple sign-ons. From his experience working with agents, Goldberg asserts multiple sign-ons is the number-one complaint among agencies. "A lot of what happens in the first phase of portal maturity is, even within a portal, you have to sign on several times to get to different areas of the portal," he says. "If you are working with agents who have to remember a separate user name and password for every carrier they are dealing with and then have to log on two or three times to use your system, you really risk losing their attention and having them move to a system that is more user friendly."

The major investments carriers have made in their portals have led to more proprietary issues. "You have some cutting-edge portals that are pushing toward the third phase of maturity–real industry differentiator," says Goldberg. "Even in those cases–or especially in those cases–carriers have not been spending nearly as much on agency integration in an attempt to let the agents use their own system."

Goldberg has begun to encourage carriers to look at both paths. "The day of the proprietary portal is not going away, but I think we are going to have to find a balance between the proprietary portals and working with agency management systems," he says.

Vendors that provide agency management systems to the agents, Goldberg believes, need to start thinking about making it easier for carriers to integrate with those systems and to give carriers a bit of control with their integration. "If the vendors allow carriers to have this content-driven approach where they can push some of their information, it will make carriers more excited and interested in spending resources on integration," he concludes.

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