Step By Step To SEMCI

Step By Step To SEMCI

For years agents have soughtand carriers have talked aboutimplementation of standardized agency-carrier interface.

Such interface would allow complete applications to be submitted to several insurers with a keystroke. Those policies could be rated and a quote from each company returned in a few minutes. Somewhere along the way the term SEMCI (single-entry, multiple-carrier interface) was coined to describe this concept.

The importance of SEMCI was brought home recently when the AUGIE (ACORD User Groups Information Exchange) survey indicated that training and keeping up with technology are the independent agents biggest challenges. Between initial training of new personnel and retraining of existing personnel to use upgrades of the numerous systems needed to keep essential records, manage agency workflows and communicate with the carriers they represent, automation education has become a big agency expense.

Similarly, half of the responding agents reported that duplicate data entry is the biggest time waster. Not only does the data entry itself take time, but checking, re-keying and correcting mistakes makes the processing even more inefficient. And for this effort, agents want more than just submission capabilities in a real-time environment; they want companies to leverage technologies to provide service transactions as well.

Pressure also is coming from policyholders. The Internet has brought us into an age of immediate response. If a customer can click onto a Web site and order an automobile at 2 a.m. from the comfort of his home, why cant he add that car to his insurance policy at the same time in the same way? If he can pick up the car the next day, hell certainly be unwilling to wait several days to know that his insurance is valid and to know what it will cost.

Agents, brokers and carriers must keep up with customer expectations, and that takes sophisticated technology on all sides. It also takes commitment to pushing and using new standards. At the heart of it though, it takes embracing the SEMCI concept and working to make it a reality for everyone in the insurance value chain.

At The Hartford, we were first in the marketplace with a batch SEMCI upload for commercial lines, and have implemented a batch personal lines upload as well. We also support download for both personal and commercial lines with all viable agency management system vendors. With regard to real-time SEMCI, we piloted real-time quoting capability two years ago. Generally speaking, though, SEMCI is a strategy that most carriers support in concept, but few have broken through. Why is this?

For most carriers during the past two years, SEMCI has taken a backseat to proprietary implementations on both the personal and commercial lines sides of the house. It remains a challenge to implement real-time SEMCI on a large scale. Immaturity of ACORD standards, limitations of the agency management systems, and delays of agency adoption of software upgrades all contribute to a slow rate of implementation in the marketplace.

But however immature the technology, agents have high expectations in the SEMCI area. The critical first step is to implement systems that fully utilize the ACORD XML standards for real-time processing. These standards define agent-company service event interactions and the information each party needs to fulfill them. The most frequent sales and service events for commercial and personal lines of business have already been defined; more are on the way.

The major stumbling block with small commercial business is the immaturity of the technology to effectively handle “company-unique” information (including underwriting questions) within the agency management system environment. We continue to work towards a breakthrough in this area, through the maturation of Service Provider eXtensions (SPX), an ACORD XML standard.

This lets agents and brokers collect common information once. And, since companies define and publish their unique data collection and editing requirements using the SPX standard, agent/broker systems that support the standard are up-to-date. Theres no more back-and-forth communications in what sometimes seems like the endless circle of “I need this one more piece of information to process this application.”

Acting together, carriers and agents can hasten the realization of SEMCI for all of us, letting us reap the benefits of lower costs, better service, consistency and faster turnaround of business transactions. In this way, we can position ourselves to satisfy the expectations of customers.

Lisa Cox is senior vice president of eBusiness at The Hartford, which is a member of the Agents Council for Technology (ACT). Opinions expressed in this column may not be reflective of the entire ACT membership.

The Agents Council for Technology is a group of agents, companies, vendors, user groups and associations assembled by the Alexandria, Va.-based Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America to promote and facilitate the use of effective technology solutions and business processes within the independent agency system.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, December 30, 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.