As an agent and a founding member of Southwest Ohio's local chapter of the Applied Systems Client Network, Vicky Tuten has seen a lot of the struggle agents have gone through in trying to marry technology with daily needs and priorities.
"The vision that we will be working toward in all we do is that all of our initiatives will help support profitability and value for our agents," said Ms. Tuten, who will take over as chair of ASCnet on Jan. 1.
Education is a key priority, according to Ms. Tuten, who is a principal and chief financial officer of Kinker-Everleigh Insurance Agency in Cincinnati.
"We need to take education to the next level," she said, explaining that at present, much of the training offered by ASCnet is focused on how to use the Applied Systems agency management system. She said the group will offer programs on broader issues, promising sessions on security technology and "management-type courses."
Beyond how-to training, however, better communication is needed to make sure agents know what's available, and carriers know what's lacking, noted Ms. Tuten.
Ms. Tuten said one of the challenges her group will face over the next year is "making sure our membership is aware of technology advances occurring in the industry." She emphasized the need to continue to participate in industry groups such as ACT and AUGIE. "I see that as a key role," she said. "A lot of issues aren't user-specific, they're industrywide."
Asked about agents' 30-plus year struggle to achieve single-entry, multiple-company interface, she noted, "Real-time processing is here at my agency now, but it's not perfect. One of my roles is to share the experience with carriers and vendors to make it better. The situation is certainly better now than it used to be."
A key point, she said, is that "I have to be willing to use the technology that is provided to me. Carriers have spent a lot of time and money developing better technology. I, as an agent, have to use it to become more efficient."
Why, then, are so many agents not using such technology? "Part of it is not knowing the specifics of the technology and perhaps not all tools are being provided by the carrier," she said. "Other agents don't know what's out there. Our role is to provide agents with our own success stories. As a result, we can show them how the technology can add customers, save money, and add to the bottom line."
Asked what role insurers should play in making real-time transactions a reality, she said carriers "need to take day-to-day feedback from agents and incorporate that to make products better. Some are more user-friendly than others. It's my responsibility to speak to the non-user-friendly carriers and say, 'Here's how it can be better for me.' It's the carriers' responsibility to take that and improve the product."
Ms. Tuten also noted that while some carriers provide agents with Web site access to key information, "it greatly benefits them, but it doesn't improve my agency's efficiency. Other steps are needed to make the real-time processes–policy inquiry, claims inquiry, billing inquiry–available to us as agents. Fourteen carriers are offering us some kind of real-time functionality in my agency, and we use it. Maybe six other carriers among the majors don't offer it. Also, they don't all offer us the same things–we take what they give us."
Carriers that don't provide real-time functionality say things like, "'You can go to our Web site,' or, 'We're working on it,'" and don't know when it will be available, said Ms. Tuten. "It's discouraging to a certain extent, but we have to keep working with them. Sometimes you would like to just stop doing business with them, but that's not always the right answer."
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