It's no surprise that insurers have consistently put ease ofdoing business for agents at the top of their priority list.Creating better and more interactive agent portals has been a focusof the industry's technological enhancement for the last decade. Ifthere have been some recent reductions in budgets devoted to agentportals for insurers, it's only because most have spent yearsbuilding out solutions and in some cases have moved into amaintenance mode. This is a sure sign that a technology hassaturated the industry and become an accepted necessity to doingbusiness.

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At the same time, policyholder portals have lagged behind.Except for large direct-channel dedicated personal lines insurerswhere policyholder toolsets are part of the core strategy, mostinsurers have put very little time and effort into them. Instead,these insurers have looked to the agent channel to manage thoserelationships, being both unwilling to disrupt the existingbusiness model and unsure of the value.