Achieving technological sophis-tication is a challenge that faces both carriers and agents, particularly when it comes to dealing with Web portals and the elusive real time. Both sides would like to attain a better working relationship, but neither is absolutely certain the other side has the right idea. Nowhere is that more true than with the fuzzy phrase ease of doing business.

Marilyn Norman, senior vice president of IT/operations for the Thomas Rutherfoord, Inc., agency, has looked at life from both sides of the industry. She has spent half her working career on the agency front and the other half toiling with carriers. “I know what it’s like to be hamstrung with legacy systems and bandaging them together to make them work and deal with all the reinsurance and storm issues and distribution, particularly in a soft market,” she says.

Norman realizes the relationship between carriers and agents can be painful. “Here’s where it is difficult being on [the agency] side of the equation,” she says. “Each carrier wants its own platform and its own portal to be easy. Unfortunately, each carrier has its own view of ease of doing business. [Carriers] may have made it easier for [themselves] to get material in or force material out, but they haven’t done anything that is different for our side.”

Angelyn S. Treutel, vice president of Treutel Insurance Agency Inc. and chair of IIABA’s Agents Council for Technology (ACT), believes carrier portals have complicated agency workflows. “Several years ago, an agent could complete one ACORD application and fax it to multiple carriers for quotes,” she says. “Today, since many carriers have developed their own unique portals, the agent has more work requiring duplicate and triplicate data entry into various Web sites along with staff training to learn all the different Web site navigation.”

Most carriers provide the capability for quoting and servicing policies through their portals, points out Treutel, but the portals are not as efficient as using real-time interfaces with the agency’s management system. Also, she asserts carriers do too much tinkering with their portals, which places a burden on agencies for staff training.

Treutel describes real time as the ability to click on a button from a client file in an agency management system or comparative rater for immediate access to carrier information on that client. The transaction may be a quote, billing inquiry, claim inquiry/loss runs, policy view, endorsements, or a request for information. “This approach provides a single workflow for servicing or quoting,” she says.