Tower Of Babel Getting Old
Anyone familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel knows that it is impossible to work effectively when you aren't speaking the same language.
After years of agents decrying their inability to submit applications to multiple carriers without having to re-key all the data for each particular insurer's proprietary system, these complaints are still falling on deaf ears.
Yet momentum seems to be building for some resolution of this age-old industry impasse.
Newly installed AMS Users Group President Pam Parry pushed the point during the group's recent annual conference, declaring that carriers "have no excuses anymore" for failing to deliver on agent demands for single-entry, multiple-company interface. She said agency management system user groups are united in their desire for SEMCI, warning, ominously, "just look at the market share that represents."
"User groups, vendors and agents are coming together on the SEMCI, once-and-done issue," she said. "Were at the dawn of seeing the technology being there and ready to go."
Ms. Parry, while acknowledging that agents have been telling insurers about the need for SEMCI for over 20 years, believes that gaining the support of a few insurers will force many more to jump on the bandwagon. "If I have six companies, and three of them buy into [single-entry], my business is likely to be shifted to the companies that buy in. Money talks," she said, declaring the start of the "no-excuses era."
This is definitely tough talk, but to turn talk into action, agents are going to have to act tough with carriers who drag their feet. If agents adopt a no-nonsense, for-us-or-against-us attitude, they might actually live to see SEMCI implemented across the industry.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, April 8, 2002. Copyright 2002 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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