Grange Insurance Launches Revised Web Site

The company understands the daily task agents face in dealing with a myriad of carriers, he said.

Mr. Urban explained that Grange sought to make dealing with the company "as easy as we could possibly make it" to help give the company "a competitive advantage and really help our agent partners do business with us." The company adopted an acronym for this process, EODB (Ease of Doing Business).

As a regional, this is ambitious. While other insurers have striven to make some lines available to their agents over the Internet, Grange has developed an extranet Web site that gives agents access to its four lines of business as well as other material agents need to do their business.

The company, said Mr. Urban, boasts an independent agent sales force of 1,200 in 10 largely Midwestern states, from Minnesota to Michigan and south to Georgia. In 2003, he said, the insurer for the first time passed $1 billion in written premium, and would record total revenue of $1.2 billion in 2004.

Grange felt the best way to deliver EODB was through technology, stated Mr. Urban.

"We headed off in a direction to look at every type of technological vehicle that we could give our agents," he said, finding efficiency, and profitability, through automating everything possible. This search led to the unveiling of the new GrangeAgent.com.

Charlie Carter, Grange's vice president and chief information officer, explained that five years ago, Grange's Web site was limited, but as technology has progressed, it became obvious more needed to be done.

After a series of meetings with focus groups and surveys, the company came up with a re-design aimed at giving agents access to the features they need to efficiently do their business.

Today, he said, 99 percent of the company's agents utilize the site when dealing with Grange.

What the site offers, explained Carol Drake, vice president of marketing, is access to the company's four lines of business: personal lines (which accounts for 80 percent of the carrier's business), commercial lines, life and annuities products, and the Grange Bank.

The site supports all quoting issuance and policy servicing transactions for all personal lines accounts, business owners and commercial auto policies (with additional commercial products still in development), quoting for all life products and annuities products, and access to Grange Bank products.

If a form is submitted electronically and does not meet the online criteria, an underwriter is notified electronically and any required action is taken, she said. The policy continues to process electronically, and agents can expect a response in 24 hours.

Additional features of the new site include access to a resource library of insurance manuals, real-time claims information, agency management reports, and forms and endorsements.

The new site supports bridging technology enabling agents to utilize their agency management systems to receive 90 percent of all transactions, new business and changes electronically, she said.