Tech Will Rule In Agent Future
Technology will help make or break independent agents in the years ahead, one leading agent official contends.
Real time processing of information and policies will be one of the key demands in the future by both consumers and agents, pointed out Jeffery Yates, director of the Agents Council for Technology, the technology arm of the Alexandria, Va.-based Independent Insurance Agents of America.
Clients are looking for the insurance transaction to take less and less time, Mr. Yates noted. It will be up to both agents and companies to provide the systems that will speed up completion of insurance transactions–whether that means just obtaining information or binding a policy–within minutes instead of days, he said.
The biggest leap forward would be the eventual adoption of XML or single-entry system standards by companies, he said. The repetitive completion of multiple company forms, even when done over the Internet, is burdensome for agents, time consuming and inefficient, and it needs to be remedied, according to Mr. Yates.
In the next two to four years, customers will be looking to do more types of business transactions (insurance and banking) and will want to be able to do them over the Internet, Mr. Yates predicted.
For the independent agent, how they are able to access information will be critical, Mr. Yates observed. The current use of the telephone line modem will prove insufficient for the number of transactions agents will do, he said, warning that continuous service will be key. To that end, agents will need broadband capability and access to the Internet through cable, DSL, or satellite providers, he said.
However, access to high-speed communication channels is sometimes a problem, Mr. Yates said. In some areas service is not available, or orders are backed up. Some providers of communication services have gone out of business, and have not yet been replaced. It is a situation that agents have no control over, and will have to wait and see how it pans out, he said.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, July 6, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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