Since the platform emerged in the 1990s, the popularity of online workers' compensation programs has grown along with carrier appetites—for reasons beyond simple convenience. This growth demonstrates that quoting and binding entirely online has clear advantages for the insured, agent and underwriter, including quick turn-around times and capturing detailed data.
Online workers' compensation programs may currently comprise a small percentage of the total workers' compensation market, but they are excellent for addressing the insurance needs of certain types of businesses. Internet workers' compensation best serves small to mid-sized employers as a stand-alone coverage. This typically means manufacturers, artisan contractors, service industry risks and others that can be easily pre-qualified through carrier-specific underwriting rules.
The need for speed
Agents and brokers, increasingly accustomed to always-available, online platforms, have developed high expectations for the speed of quoting and binding. Speed benefits everyone—faster quoting frees up underwriters to focus on servicing, while giving agents more time to focus on generating new business.
With online portals, agents don't need to submit paperwork and wait for a desk underwriter to approve it. Instead, they enter information and quickly get a quote—sometimes instantly. When they receive the quote, they also receive in real time the documents needed to present that quote, such as the rating worksheet details and the Accord application. They have the option to bind the account, giving them the ability to quickly move on to the next proposal. This is the closest agents can get to "one-stop shopping;" with everything handled through the Internet portal.
Carriers' Internet workers' compensation programs have pre-defined underwriting rules built-in. Once the agents understand those rules, they can significantly reduce the time they spend trying to pre-qualify accounts; they understand which accounts would not usually pre-qualify.
In short, the best Internet workers' compensation programs use the best technology to streamline processes for agents. They free up the underwriter's time to service the account and provide the level of customer service expected in this marketplace.
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The role of analytics
For underwriters, Internet workers' compensation programs allow access to an enormous amount of data. That's because data can be captured through online submissions. This data allows underwriters to use analytics to confirm they are attracting the right risks while getting the underwriting results they expect. Using analytics to determine your specific underwriting appetite, is a critical part of the Internet process. There are large amounts of data stored within most Internet programs that can be used not only to determine missed opportunities but also to identify areas that need improvement.
Analytics is the process of carefully analyzing raw data to yield useful information, and this often reveals important trends. It helps insurance carriers develop their underwriting rules and, in turn, ensures consistent decision-making across the underwriting staff. It helps reinforce the expected outcome—profitability.
Post-underwriting: What to expect
Validating accounts after they are quoted and bound online is an integral part of the underwriters' role in servicing Internet workers' compensation policies. The post-underwriting validation process is used to ensure the correct data has been captured for accounts that have been bound online.
This process reduces the sort of audits that lead to premium increases and ultimately reduces the need for endorsements. Validating accounts simply ensures the account was entered properly with the correct classifications and all class specific underwriting questions were answered as expected.
What online workers' compensation programs do well—allow for the ease of submitting business online for small to mid-sized businesses that don't carry heavy exposures—can save the insured and broker time and money, while making the underwriter's job a little easier.
Pam Wagner is Senior Vice President and National Practice Leader for Workers' Compensation at V3 Insurance Partners (www.V3ins.com), a managing general underwriting agency offering insurance programs targeted at middle market companies. Email: pam.wagner@v3ins.com; phone: 215-600-0749.
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