March To The Real-Time Beat

Going beyond the Real Time Campaign promoted by IIABA, the push for consistency and ease of doing business needs to be supported and adopted not just by agents, but by carriers and vendors, said Jeff Yates, ACT executive director. The goal is to have all partners on the same page with usage and implementation.

Top concerns include improving automated data upload for midsized commercial business and promoting real-time usage among excess and surplus carriers, Yates said.

There's no doubt that expanding and fine-tuning the real time process is instrumental for agency success. “In the latest agency Best Practices study, agents using real time and commercial lines download gave it almost 100 percent in terms of positive impact on their productivity,” he said. “Getting them to use functionality and having it consistently available from carriers so they have consistent experience are big areas of opportunity.”

“We're currently fine-tuning how different groups work together so we don't duplicate efforts,” said Brad Smith, president of Smith-Berclair Insurance in Memphis, Tenn., and a member of the ACT Committee. “We continue to look at things from an agent's perspective to work more efficiently.”

Developing consistency in usage and best practices is a big issue for agents, said Sue Brown, vice president of carrier interface, BancorpSouth Insurance Services, Little Rock, Ark., and a member of ACT's Agency Real Time Experience working group. As an agency with 23 locations and many carriers across all states, BancorpSouth is sometimes stymied by the differing functions between carriers. “When you do a transaction with a carrier, it's sometimes difficult to know if they have a certain capability because they have all rolled out different functions and have not enabled all of them,” Brown said. “For example, some carriers might have a policy inquiry function, some just do ratings, some just do billing inquiries. Users can't memorize that; we have a chart, but it still requires users to refer to it. We encourage our carriers to adopt all real time tools so agents have a reasonable expectation of what they can do.”

Related: Read the article “App Attack” by Melissa Hillebrand.

Phase one of the working group's project aimed to show carriers that consistency is the best way to do real time, Brown said. “The second phase is to bring carriers and vendors in to look at what we've done and question it, understand why it's important and see what parts they can implement.”

ACT working groups are examining six top issues:

1. Connectivity and the E&S market

A major sticking point in the real time picture was the difficulty in adapting it for use with excess and surplus lines. That's rapidly changing, Yates said. “This year's AAMGA tech conference had 100 more people in attendance than in previous years, which is impressive in a tough market. They're showing an interest in ACORD standards and sensitivity to the retail agent's desire to use these forms in the E&S market,” he said. “We are doing some data upload to general agents from retail agents, and there are also a few examples of data download back to the retail agent from the MGA. These are good first steps.”

2. Midsized commercial lines

Although personal and small commercial business is easily adaptable to real time transactions, the process has been trickier for more complex midsized and larger commercial business data download. With data currently sent by email, transactions can be slow and cumbersome, Yates said. Another issue is how to change midsized commercial submissions from a multistep process to the one-and-done of real time.

Commercial data download in general needs improvement, Smith said. “Personal lines download works well, not so much commercial lines,” he said. “It sometimes contaminates the data that is already in an agency's system. In fact, many agents have turned off their commercial lines download capabilities because it didn't work well. We need to find a way for data to be coded so we know what's new.” ACT's mid-commercial working group is currently looking at ways to improve commercial line download in general, Smith said. (See “It's official: LexisNexis Insurance Exchange is open for business“.)

3. Automated workflows

Vendors are introducing and fine-tuning this process, especially for larger users, Yates said. Essentially these workflows automatically move transactions from phase to phase on completion, instead of a CSR or producer having to manually move the process to the next step. The simpler steps already exist in most agency management systems, Smith said, but don't go far enough. “A lot of this should happen in background,” he said.

Related: Read the article “Yesterday's Toys; Today's Tools” by Michael P. Voelker.

4. Password usage

This is a huge industry-wide issue that transcends real time because it applies to access to multiple carrier websites, Smith said. “We transact business with lots of different entities that require lots of IDs and password combos that we have to memorize. And passwords expire, so you must take time to get a new one, which creates a stopping point in the process.” Some carriers have come up with their own solutions. For example, broker BB&T and The Hartford have set up a trust system in which the broker and carrier synchronize their password directories, eliminating the need to manually enter passwords. “If expanded across the industry, it would be easier to transact business across all lines and carriers,” Smith said. Another approach is the use of federated identities, which link a person's electronic identity and attributes across multiple management systems, Yates said. Once an agent logs onto his management system, he can automatically move into the carriers' websites without a separate password. “Once that's settled, we can do more with sharing from carrier websites to agency websites,” Smith said. “The reason for fixing passwords is so when a customer wants to go to Safeco to change policy information, he can go to my website to Safeco in a secure environment.”

Related: Read the article “What's Taking So Long?” by Robert Regis Hyle.

5. Client quoting portals

Much of the growth in real time transactions is related to quoting with comparative raters, Yates said. With the perfection of workflows and the growth of real time usage, some agents are even offering their customers the capability of getting quotes directly from the agency's website by pulling servicing information directly from the carriers. “This is an issue we care about and want to see more of,” Yates said.

6. Social networking standards

ACT and AUGIE are also helping make websites more functional (Related: Read “Kansas Big I Rolls Out Exclusive App for Agents“), establishing social media guidelines for agencies and encouraging them to adopt these policies in their offices, Smith said.