Ever since insurers started using computer technology to do business, agents have been asking for technology-enabled interfaces with carriers to allow for easier, faster, and more efficient rating, administration, and processing.
The battle for real time (once referred to as SEMCI—single-entry, multiple company interface) has been waged for more than 30 years, with agents complaining of painfully slow progress on the part of carriers.
In recent years, however, some carriers have been in the forefront of enabling real-time transactions, only to find many in the agency community have been slow to adopt the technology. Accordingly, we asked a couple of insurance executives what they would want agents to do to help achieve optimal agency-carrier interface.
Stay Up-to-Date
“Agents need to stay current on their agency management systems,” according to Linda Dodson, assistant vice president and e-business manager for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. “They need to adopt all these new technologies we’ve been building.”
Chubb will be piloting a claims download function for agents by midyear, Dodson says, but many agents won’t be able to take advantage of the technology because they are not running the most current versions of their agency management systems.
“We do first notice of loss, and we have attachment capability, but again, agents can’t use it if they’re not current,” points out Dodson, who notes that prior to joining Chubb, she had worked for an agency for 11 years.
In addition, she says, “agency principals have to get engaged and not think of technology as an evil thing. If you don’t adopt it, you’re losing money. Principals really need to push and drive adoption of these technologies, and they need to push staff to get involved.”
One way to encourage such involvement, she advises, would be to offer incentives and rewards to staff who utilize the technologies.
“Many agents think technology is a one-time expenditure, but until you get rid of that attitude, you’re not getting anywhere,” asserts Dodson. “[You have to] make technology a part of the line item budget, a cost of doing business.”
Agency principals then should make sure they are up-to-date on their management systems and make staff accountable and responsible for working with the technology, she says.
Communication is a key to the technology aspects of the agency-carrier interface, states Dodson. “Agencies need to talk to marketing managers about what they really need,” she says. “Technology does not usually come up in that discussion, and the agent may not know enough about the carrier to bring the subject up. The amount of agents who don’t know about our offerings is incredible.”
Even when there is communication, however, the message may not get through, she contends. “There is a lot of noise on the Internet,” she says. “We may do an e-mail blast, but how many people open them up and read them?
“We need to reinforce our technology; that’s where we carriers are failing,” she concludes. “Agents have pushed hard for turning off the paper, but when it comes to a lot of other technological advantages, they don’t know what they don’t know.”
Inadequate Systems
Interface problems are magnified where inadequate agency systems are in use. “Some independent agents have their own systems that write business on behalf of us,” says Craig Lowenthal, senior vice president and CIO of NYMAGIC, Inc. “Optimally, we would want all agents to input data directly into our systems, but they have a system they have invested in, and they want everything in one place, so you can’t blame them.
“The next best thing for us would be accurate and timely feeds to our back-end systems,” he notes. That can be compromised in the case of “smaller and less technologically sophisticated agents who rely on mom-and-pop consulting outfits to make changes to their agency systems.”
If the agents’ system isn’t designed to give the company a data feed, or they have to spend money to do so, “a lot of them rekey the feeds into a spreadsheet,” says Lowenthal. That can result in data-quality problems that lead to serious mistakes. “We want to limit the manual intervention, limit the number of times data gets re-input,” he explains. “Agencies in that position should either go with a standard agency management system or enter our systems directly,” he adds.
“We need to be able to process transactions properly into our systems,” he continues. “Every agency system is different, and data migration may take many iterations before you get all the kinks out.”
Insurers also can do their part to help with this problem, indicates Lowenthal. “We can do better at scrubbing the data and making sure it’s right before we get it into the system.”