When it comes to selecting carriers to place personal lines business, independent agents look for speed of policy delivery, speed of underwriting decision, convenience and claim services, and prefer to work through a carrier's portal rather than through their own agency management systems, according to a new survey by Novarica and the Personal Lines Growth Alliance (PLGA).

(Click here to hear a podcast with Karlyn Carnahan, principal at Novarica and coauthor of the study.)

The results are part of "How Technology and Service Drive Carrier Choice," a study that looks at 96 PLGA member agencies of all sizes that write personal lines policies, with respondents including agency principals, producers and CSRs.

According to the III, independent agency writers accounted for 29.3 percent of personal lines net premium in 2009, a number that's growing as agencies recognize the need to supplement soft commercial market revenues with personal lines business. Although strong relationships between agents and carriers—and specifically agencies and underwriters—are critical, technology is increasingly driving successful personal lines premium production, and can sometimes even overcome a less-than-perfect underwriter relationship.

Eighty different carriers were mentioned in the PLGA survey as one of an agency's top three carriers, and 42 were mentioned as a No. 1 carrier, with Travelers Group, Auto-Owners, Chubb, Erie Insurance Group and Progressive as the top 5.

Key findings include:

A majority of agents (42 percent) prefer to work through a carrier's portal than through the agency's agency management system, although 29 percent have no preference. Interestingly, 38 percent of agency principals preferred working through the agency management system, while only 20 percent of CSRs preferred it. Producers had a slight preference for carrier portals.
Online app submission, online quick quote and online full, bindable quote were ranked as the top three most important capabilities for carrier portals. Agency principals were the only participants who ranked commission access as important, while producers rank a full bindable quote as the most highly ranked item. CSRs find online policy changes as the most important function.
Top insurers have rich functionality, with more than 80 percent of those named in the survey offering the above-mentioned portal features cited by agents as critical.
More than half of all agents surveyed use comparative raters "all of the time" (32 percent) or "most of the time" (22 percent). Producers are slightly more likely to use comparative raters when starting a quote, and CSRs are less likely to use comparative raters; 35 percent of CSRs surveyed reported that they "never" use comparative raters when starting a quote, preferring to work through the portal of their preferred carriers.
Policy download, application upload and policy quoting are critical functions for agency management system integration. Principals ranked the ability to upload an application as much more important than producers or CSRs; produced ranked downloading the policy as most important, while cSRs were most likely to rank quoting policy as a top priority.
Agents ranked little to no difference in how satisfied they were with the capabilities provided by the top three carriers. All of the capacilities agents seek are offered by the three top-choice carriers more than 70 percent of the time, with very little gap in what these carriers provide their agents. The biggest gap is found in carriers' ability to quote a policy and claims functionality such as submitting a claim, downloading a claim and inquiring on the status of a claim.

Special Reports /

Agents Prefer Carrier Portals When Placing Personal Business: PLGA

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