The Holy Grail of property-casualty insurance–single-entry, multiple-company interface–remains more of a dream than a reality for a significant portion of disgruntled independent agents, a survey of intermediaries has revealed.
Indeed, many agents are still frustrated with tech roadblocks imposed by proprietary carrier systems that force them to do extra work, slow down their processing time and add to their costs, according to findings in the ACORD-User Groups Information Exchange (AUGIE) "2006 Agency Technology Survey."
While agents indicated they have benefited from real-time communication improvements with their carriers and clients, a large number–just under 50 percent–still indicated dissatisfaction with "multiple workflows brought on by carrier-unique systems," AUGIE noted. The results were announced here last week at a panel presentation during the annual ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum.
When asked, "What is your agency's greatest challenge in supporting automation?" 48.9 percent of the 4,394 responding to this question cited "learning and using various company proprietary systems," while another 20.2 percent said "multiple user IDs and passwords."
In addition, 46.6 percent of 4,254 respondents cited "duplicate data entry" as their "major automation time waster in doing business today"–by far the biggest single complaint cited in answering this question.
These persistent tech hurdles are having a definite, negative impact on how producers do business. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents either "somewhat" or "strongly" agreed that "difficulty in securing multiple quotes has restricted the number of carriers" from which they seek quotes.
"This is not a healthy trend," said Lisa Leach-Goth, chair of the survey working group, in a statement released with the AUGIE survey results. "Many independent agencies appear to have workflows so dependent on a couple of carriers they are missing out on opportunities to serve clients as they deserve to be served."
Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they were at least "somewhat likely to choose a carrier–even if it is not perceived to be the lowest price"–if their agency automation system "could pre-fill a percentage of the fields" on their carrier's proprietary Web site. Ninety-one percent of the 3,822 answering the question said they at least "sometimes" bypass their agency management system to go directly to company Web sites.
"While carriers have made great strides in making their proprietary Web sites–as they describe it–efficient and convenient, we on the AUGIE Leaders Council worry that without industry-standard, multicarrier workflow, the growth of the independent agency system could be hampered," said Ms. Goth, who is vice president of the New Bethlehem, Pa.-based Charles P. Leach Agency.
The survey, which is an update of the first AUGIE poll taken in 2002, shows that "many agents are frustrated with the process of having to go from Web site to Web site to get quotes–a process some liken to the situation 15- or 20 years ago, when we moved within our agencies from one company-provided terminal to the next," added Ms. Goth, who is also president of the National InStar Users Group.
"Carriers and vendors interested in helping independent agencies grow–and interested in growing their own business along with the agents–can take the survey findings as an encouragement to support more uniform processes that work through the agent's own system," according to Ms. Goth.
On a positive note, "the ability to do real-time transactions has increased dramatically since the 2002 survey," Ms. Goth noted. She said that agency management system providers have interacted with carriers to drive a range of inquiry and other capabilities for agency and brokerage professionals–most involving billing and/or policy inquiry transactions.
Indeed, the leading "real-time transactions" cited were policy and billing inquiries (18 percent each), claims inquiries (16 percent), and rating and endorsement processing (13 percent each). About 86 percent of the 5,143 answering this question at least "somewhat agree" that "real-time quoting will help in my workflow."
"The call to develop real-time inquiry functionality came out of the 2002 AUGIE survey," according to Ms. Goth. "The research helped drive a shift from where many carriers were headed in their development work and ended up creating workflow changes that agents actually have incorporated into their workflows."
She added that "as real-time inquiry capability has matured, and more agents and brokers are using it, the push now should be toward real-time new business processing, endorsement processing and quoting."
In other key survey results, however, a significant portion of agents came up short in certain critical operational areas.
For example, while about 80 percent of those who responded to this question at least "somewhat" agreed that their agency had adopted a specific policy to protect the privacy of client information, that still means one out of five agencies do not have a data security policy in place.
In addition, while about two-thirds of those responding to the question at least "somewhat" agreed that their agency has adopted a specific disaster preparedness plan, one-third had not, leaving their businesses and their clients exposed in case of a catastrophe.
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