A survey of property-casualty insurers, most of them in the workers' compensation sector, has found the number of firms offering Internet-based transactions is accelerating rapidly, a technology firm reported.
Fiserv in Brookfield, Wis. also found a number of holdouts who have no plans to offer transactions via the Internet.
The company said while 41 percent of its online survey respondents said they already offer quotes via the Web, another 24 percent said they plan to do so within a year.
In addition to asking about quotes, the survey of information technology executives, asked when companies would be using the Internet for policy issuance, endorsements, renewals, reinstatements, cancellations, billing and audits.
Fiserv found that 29.4 percent said they had no plans at all to offer quotes over the Internet and 41.2 percent said they had no plans to use the Internet for either reinstatements or audits.
All of the other firms said they either used the Internet for reinstatement and audits or planned to within three years.
Some 47.1 percent said they had no plans to offer online cancellations.
The numbers showed that policy issuance via the Web will double to 47 percent of responding companies within the year and online endorsements will jump from 12 percent to 47 percent in that same time span. But 35 .4 percent had no plans to use it for policy issuance and 29.4 percent had no plans to use it for endorsements.
For renewals, 23.6 percent had no plans to employ the Internet and for billing 29.5 percent had no plans.
According to the firm, demand for policy-related service level improvements is a key driver for this increased level of web activity.
Todd Eyler, chief technology officer of Fiserv Insurance said, "Because the workers' compensation line has become so large, it's important to understand how insurance carriers and TPAs [third party administrators] are aligning technology to the specific challenges of the business. "It's clear from the survey that these firms are moving toward technology that delivers services via the Web."
Survey results, the company said, also demonstrated that a new area of interest for a majority of the participants included a technology solution that would generate claims from pharmacies, physicians or hospitals, into a first report of injury and trigger an outcall.
Gary Sherne, president of P&C Systems Solutions for Fiserv Insurance said, "The survey results substantiate our belief that insurance organizations dealing with workers' compensation face the same alignment issues when it comes to technology and business initiatives that other property and casualty lines face."
According to Fiserv, workers' comp is the largest commercial line of business and the third largest line overall in the U.S. property-casualty market and comprises 75 percent or more of the total book of business for 86 percent of its survey respondents.
Survey participants were also quizzed on their range of interest in using predictive analytics for risk selection, premium forecasting, rate development, forecasting claims, setting reserves, fraud detection and subrogation.
The 29.5 percent said they had little interest in using it for risk selection, but there was much greater interest in applying analytics to subrogation. Within a spectrum of interest from high to slight or little interest, only 6.2 percent said they had little interest.
The full survey results are online at www.fiservinsurance.com under "What's New."
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