For decades, technologically sophisticated agents have been begging insurers to provide real-time capability for handling transactions between agent and carrier. Now that some insurers have been offering such technology, however, the tables have turned. The burden has shifted to independent agents to use the tools provided. Insurers complain agents have been slow in adopting the technology, and some carriers are saying they won’t continue to offer the service if they don’t get a better response.

“To those carriers, I would say hang in there and work with us,” stated Kim Favreau, newly elected chair of the Applied Systems Client Network (ASCnet), in an interview during the 2007 ASCnet annual conference in Orlando toward the end of last year. “Keep the dialogue [with agents] open. You have to sell real time to some agents and get them to use it.”

Asked why some agents have been reluctant to embrace real time, Favreau, who officially took office on Jan. 1, noted agents are “traditionally resistant to change.” In a smaller agency especially, she added, “change can be daunting.”

She suggested some agencies may be waiting for real-time transaction technology to be “perfected” before making any change. She also speculated busy agents may tend to put the idea of real-time adoption on the back burner while they attend to more pressing matters.

“If we don’t embrace real time now, what will happen with the next generation of customers who will expect 24-hour/7-days-a-week service?” asked Favreau, who is the commercial lines manager for Connell & Curley Insurance Agency in Natick, Mass. “This will hurt the industry as a whole. It’s hard on carriers, too,” she noted, adding some insurers are becoming frustrated with agents who don’t use the technology that is being offered.

Real-Time Future

Someday, agents will be able to do even more with real-time transactions, she explained. “We’ll be able to tell customers, ‘I can do everything for you,’ including a lot of things that are carrier functions now. Having to send customers away from our agencies to carrier Web sites cuts down on the relationships we’re trying to build with those customers,” Favreau pointed out.

“To agents who haven’t adopted real time where it is available, I would say, ‘Take a step back and think about it. If we all work together, it will happen faster. We need to work with the carriers on using it and on solving the problems—together,’” she stated.