Independent insurance agents want what every consumer wants these days—one stop shopping. When agents have issues, they don't want to call 10 different people in the carrier's organization to get the issue resolved, explains Mike Fitzgerald, senior analyst in the insurance practice for Celent.
"Carriers need to make sure the people in their organization answer questions quickly, effectively, and efficiently," he says. "A lot of carriers are still working in the dark ages on producer management side."
Such ease of doing business is important for agents, but Fitzgerald has no doubt that pricing remains the No. 1 issue for agents when shopping for their customers.
"Pricing sophistication continues to be a differentiator," he says. "[Carriers] have to get that part right, there's no doubt. A lot of carriers have worked hard on that .and are seeing some payoffs for their efforts. Then it comes down to ease of doing business. It's still a solid number two, but given that the number one issue has received so much attention, it's like 1B versus No. 2."
Fitzgerald points out there are multiple factors involved in the ease-of-business discussion. "There's ease of doing business in terms of can you get a policy out the door quickly," he says. "There's a fair amount of agreement around what that looks like and who's good at it, but there's more to the relationship than just the policy and billing transactions. It's also built around commissions, licensing, and compliance. There are still some big differences between carriers and agents in regards to how all that works."
Fitzgerald believes mobile technology is making in-roads, particularly in areas such as inquiry and notification.
"Carriers that have invested in more modern systems for other reasons are now able to easily make the transition to mobile computing," says Fitzgerald. "Even with the iPad, it is still questionable as to how much a general agent out there really wants to do with automation and mobile."
Agents enjoy the freedom of being away from the office and still having access to notifications and getting information no matter where they are, but Fitzgerald remembers similar claims when another technology debuted.
"When laptops came out people felt agents would be binding insurance on the trunks of cars," he says. "I haven't seen anything that would change that dynamic. As far as transactions are concerned, the jury is still out."
Where carriers can help their agency partners is in marketing the agency through social networking tools.
"Particularly in property/casualty, where they don't have the same regulation as they have on the life side, [social networking] is beginning to be another tool that carriers are helping agents use," he says.
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