There are no hidden meanings in the title of the ACORD User Groups Information Exchange (AUGIE). AUGIE is made up of the leaders of the different user groups that provide technology solutions to the insurance agency population and is facilitated by Carolyn "Cal" Durland, who also serves as director of member relations for ACORD.

"They've come together and said they are agents first," says Durland of the AUGIE participants. "They take off the hats of the user groups and declare, 'What can we do collectively as agents to lead the industry.' ACORD is like Switzerland—a safe kind of place, not tied to any vendor, and doing things for the good of the industry."

Although AUGIE is led by agents, the success of the organization depends on the merging of information from carriers and vendors as well, according to Durland.

"ACORD helps bring it all together, but we work on ways to make the entire industry more efficient," she says. "What agents primarily want is make the sale and service the customer. Back in the office that's where their focus is, so they depend on the user groups to get information back to them. They may not all be actively involved in their user groups or AUGIE, but they look for feedback."

"AUGIE is a way to have a forum where we get the agents, the carriers, user group leaders, and vendors together, as well as ACORD representatives," says Jeff Yates, executive director of the Agents Council on Technology (ACT). "AUGIE and ACT are organized efforts within the industry to have people sit down and discuss the problems of the distribution system. How can we do our business better? We both have limited resources so we tend to divide up [the issues]."

The value of user groups arises from the fact no single agency or organization has the ability to use an agency management system at 100 percent capacity, explains Ted Joyce, owner of Insurance Agency Services of Richmond, Va., and a board member of the XD Net user group, which is a participant in AUGIE.

"We all struggle with using the agency management system in relation to best practices and using it to its fullest extent in the way it was designed," he says. "Because of that challenge, we exchange information, data, suggestions, complaints, and issues."

The user groups in turn banded together with ACORD and ACT to create AUGIE.

"It allows ACORD, agents and brokers, insurers, and solution providers to gather information, share ideas and hopefully shape the future of what the industry is doing in the technology world," says Joyce. "Even though we are on different systems, all the systems basically work similarly. It's the bells and whistles that make the difference in the systems. At the end of the day all agency management systems basically store data and move data from point A to point B."

Agents and brokers have begun to realize that even though one system is called Applied and another is called Nexsure; both systems have similar challenges and issues, according to Joyce.

AUGIE doesn't look at system-based issues, but rather areas such as workflow, work processes, and the demands of the partners.

"Vendors, carriers, MGAs, brokers, aggregators have come to the realization that we all have similar issues therefore it is easier to tackle the issues as a group rather than individually," says Joyce. "It's the old adage: Power comes from the group, not necessarily from the individual."

CARRIER PRESENCE

Carriers have come to participate in AUGIE and ACT in recent years.

"In the past, the carriers kept away because they didn't think it was their fight," says Joyce. "What they learned, though, is want similar results like we do."

Agents can't survive in a process where there are multiple workflows.

"It goes back to the original SEMCI situation: one entry," says Joyce. "What we find ourselves doing is carriers build their portals and their philosophy around 'come to me and I'll take care of you.' What we are trying to promote is there is nothing wrong with you promoting yourself, but it would be extremely beneficial to have a process that is very similar or identical to other insurers."

Agents tend to gravitate toward systems that are easy to use and have a rich functionality, points out Joyce. If one carrier is out of line from what the others are doing the tendency is not to change the workflow to work with that different carrier—even if the carrier has a better price—because it falls out of the mainstream.

"Part of the agents' challenge is to be able to synthesize regularity and consistency because we can't have our operations with five different workflows for one true process," he says. "You tend to work with carriers that are more automated and close to consistent with other systems."

REAL TIME

One focus for AUGIE has been helping with the organization of GetRealTime.org to promote real time in the industry.

"It's [AUGIE's] job to get people to recognize real time is there," says Durland. "We have to get past [preaching to] the choir. Things might need to be tweaked or enhanced, but there is information out there that can be used for years going forward."

AUGIE is working to spread more information to show the agents they can achieve a consistent workflow to connect with their partners, which gives them more time to do the service and the selling, points out Durland.

Real-time is clearly a priority, especially for commercial lines and the E&S market, agrees Joyce.

"Most carriers have personal lines down pat—it's consistent and been around a while," says Joyce. "The commercial side has been a struggle. Part of that struggle is because carriers have built systems in so many different ways it is hard to have a standard. That's an impediment for us."

Real time remains a hot button for agencies, particularly for the commercial side.

"Over the last 12 to 18 months carriers have started to realize that automating and paying attention to what agencies say has been an incredible help for them," says Joyce. "It's also reducing their costs and they have finally figured that out. They are paying more attention to it. It's gaining steam and for those of us who have been banging on this for some time it's a great feeling to see tangible results."

PASSWORD MANAGEMENT

Durland points out that multiple passwords used by agencies is another issue that has reached the tipping point for agents.

"When an agent tries to connect to a business partner, if the password doesn't work they stop what they are doing to get some help," says Durland. "The industry needs to resolve that issue."

Agencies have hundreds of passwords that have to be managed, points out Durland. Some of the password issues have been solved by what's happening with the agency management systems, but every survey AUGIE has done has listed passwords as an issue for agents.

"It's an issue we haven't been able to get past yet, but a new organization, the ID Federation, is a great initiative that we're hoping succeeds," says Durland. "It's on the right track. Ultimately, customers would like to self-service their account, so they recognize the agent more than the carrier. Wouldn't it be nice to go to the agency's Website to be able to log in with your federated ID so you can get to whatever you need to do through the agency. This will solve some issues for the consumer, too."

Yates agrees that password advocacy is a critical issue that has taken too long to resolve. "We had a password work group eight years ago and came up with a common rule for passwords with carriers to get more consistency, but it never amounted to much," he says. "The best improvement in password management we've seen so far has been with real time tools. Now we have the new ID Federation. It's a big priority for both ACT and AUGIE because that's a huge pain point for agents."

Password management has gained remarkable momentum—with carriers, vendors, and agents—over a short period of time, explains Yates.

"I think everyone sees the value of going to digital identities to replace passwords," he says. "I'm hopeful we can start to get some momentum to make it happen. There's actually a practicing use of digital identities, but it has to go much further. There's a lot of potential and a lot of interest by agents."

Password management comes down to two issues, according to Joyce. One is to make the system manageable and the second is to have an automated management system.

"What we are hoping for it that password management would evolve to where it would automatically connect to each of our partners so that once Company X verifies this is Ted Joyce's agency, than everyone connected with Ted will automatically be identified and verified so we don't have to manage all the passwords," Joyce says. "All I'll have to do is manage my system, and be identified once."

Joyce believes this is one of the issues carriers need to respond to if they truly believe they are easy to do business with from workflow and pure agency management standpoints.

As for the security issues, Joyce points out if a lower level person leaves the agency it might mean changing four or five passwords, but if it is a higher level producer there may be 20 or 25 passwords that need to be changed.

"You can't disconnect them in one fell swoop," says Joyce. "You have to do them all individually. What happens if you miss one and unfortunately that person has an axe to grind? You and your carrier partner are at risk. That not only affects you, it affects a client or a prospect. You can see the great payback on this and it's critical to get done."

TRUST FRAMEWORK

Jim Rogers, assistant vice president, commercial markets technology for The Hartford, is a member of the board for the ID Federation. He explains that next to SEMCI, the proliferation of IDs and passwords is the most serious issue in the agency distribution system.

Interested groups, such as AUGIE, scanned different verticals for the answer, according to Rogers, and came across the concept of trust frameworks.

"How can you create an entity for people to join so they can trust each other with identity?" asks Rogers. "The goal we came up with was to minimize or eliminate the notion of passwords within the industry."

Within an agency, if they are appointed with 20 carriers, each individual has 20 passwords to manage, points out Rogers. With the trust framework concept, the agency management system or the agency itself is the identity provider.

"As they log in to their PC they will seamlessly work with their carrier and not have to remember passwords anymore," he says.

One of the problems connected with managing passwords takes place when an employee at an agency may have to go to each carrier's Website to get an ID, points out Rogers. When that employee leaves the agency, the agency has to deactivate the log-in and go to every single carrier they are licensed with.

"In a federated world, the instant the agent leaves the agency, all the connections are severed," he says. "That was another key provision to instantly turn someone off so if they went to another agency there was no way they could log back into their old system."

Working with a collective group of people—carriers, agents and vendors—a non-profit group was started in December of 2011, the ID Federation, whose mission was to work within the financial services industry to minimize the need for passwords. Membership includes carriers such as The Hartford, Hanover, and Progressive, most of the agency management systems vendors, and other interested parties.

"Providing this capability will simplify and streamline a very time consuming and cumbersome process for distribution," says Mark Esposito, senior vice president and Chief Technology Officer for The Hartford. "It is great example of how ACORD, carriers, agents and software providers are partnering to drive business value through standardization."

THREE DIVISIONS

The ID Federation created a business model around three areas: business, technical and legal. Rogers reports the technology to accomplish their goal already is in place; the issue focuses more on how to apply the technology and in what context.

The legal issues were daunting, explains Rogers.

"We found if we were going to try and federate between two organizations it may take longer on the legal side than the technology side," he says. "The issues of indemnification, and data breaches were important. If you join the federation you agree to a trust framework so you are going to be held accountable to these trust standards and these legal, binding documents. It was a lot of work for the general counsels to figure that out so the end result was good for the carrier, the software provider, and for the agent or broker."

There have been about 10 implementations of the trust framework this year and Rogers explains the ID Federation is committed to seeing that grow.

"We have quite a lot of interest among carriers and we haven't done any marketing yet," he says. "We're OK with that because we want people that are serious about it and who are going to be members."

Rogers knows that it is a rare case where companies increase their level of security without adding more work. But in this case he believes carriers and agencies can significantly increase the security of transactions and make it significantly easier to do business.

"Whether going browser-to-browser or Web service, [agents] are clicking on something and instantly getting into the product," he says. "That's a seamless workflow and is much more secure."

A SMALL TOKEN

The ID Federation is using a SAML token created by an identity provider and sent over the line so both the agency and the carrier know what the token looks like and what it's made up of. The identity is authenticated and the user is allowed to enter into the application, according to Rogers.

"Right now the federation only deals with authentication," says Rogers. "We haven't tackled authorization. This gets them in the door but whoever the relying party is or the one taking in the credentials has the identity there and matches it with the authorization."

What will be valuable for all parties once they join is they will get the legal protection and a set of standards for the technology that align with the ACORD standards, specifically AWSP version 2.0 of the ACORD standards. ACORD was part of the initial group with some of the design work, points out Rogers.

If the carrier already has a federation in place they can leverage that, points out Rogers.

"Just to be clear, the transactions don't go through the ID Federation," he says. "There's no centralized hub or anything like that. When people get into identity management it is up to each partner to determine the trust level. Just because you are a member of ID Federation, it doesn't mean you are going to do business with every member. If you decide to do business with another partner your speed to market for authenticating is significantly reduced because it is clear: how you do it technically and the legal agreements are in place, although they don't replace underlying agreements any two entities would have."

2012 GOALS

There are a lot of people involved already and the ID Federation is just starting to take on memberships, according to Rogers. He believes the numbers will double and triple through the years.

"Our biggest goal is to make sure we have those communicating partners that want to work in a federated world and need the framework to do it," he says. "It will continue to evolve, but our mission is to eliminate or minimize the need for passwords."

Rogers knows insurers are competitive, but he believes carriers need to compete on customer service, their products, their value-add, and price.

"What I found is that in financial services one thing you don't have to compete on is whether your password has seven characters or eight," he says. "We agree that security is something everyone in the financial services cares about and we can make it better for our customers as an industry. We are going to compete on many things, but we don't have to compete on a password."

ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE

AUGIE continues to advocate the agents' issues and concerns, explains Rogers.

"AUGIE has been helpful from the voice-of-the-customer aspect," he says. "It's up to us as an industry to take the challenge and move forward. In this case it led to the creation of the ID Federation, with the cooperation across carriers, vendors, and agents to solve the issue. I'm excited that the financial services industry is taking a lead. This is one of the finest trust frameworks I've seen across multiple industries. We started it in June and now we're starting to roll it out now."

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