The short answer is nothing at all.
After all, Canada has a population one-tenth the size of the U.S., with perhaps 250 P&C carriers. That’s equivalent to one big U.S. state — California. Creating a portal for one state wouldn’t be a trick — it just wouldn’t be relevant. Scale makes a difference and the U.S. is on a different one.
And there’s a difference in culture. The Canadian industry appears willing and able to cooperate. In the U.S., agents and carriers blame each other for everything. Cooperation among carriers is limited by law. The marketplace, not central planning is thought to be the route to great products. Further, it’s a mistake to talk about the common good of the industry. There is no such thing. There’s only the self-interest of each individual party. And by the way, not-for-profits shouldn’t displace profit-making businesses.
All good points, I suppose. But surely the independent agency community in the U.S. can do better with the Internet. Must we resign ourselves to half-hearted industry efforts? If there’s no common good, isn’t there at least a possibility of individual goods that would all be improved through cooperation?
When all is said and done, the critical difference between Canada’s case and our own is that Canada enjoys strong industry leadership with insurance and the Internet and the U.S. has none. The trade associations pay passing, but not passionate, attention. ACORD can’t lead the independent segment. IVANS is too conservative. AUGIE is more involved in procedure than substance. Major vendors are more concerned about selling what agents seem willing to buy, rather than trying to solve industry problems. Who can blame them? The industry technology leadership vacuum is a recent reality. A generation ago, and then more recently, agents seriously considered the creation of the kind of shared service CSIO is now implementing, though without the Internet and using times-sharing and other technological artifacts of those earlier times. Those movers and shakers didn’t know and didn’t believe their cause was hopeless. Today, only a fool, it seems, would take up the cause of industry cooperative technological solutions.
Sophisticated realism or naïve cynicism. You decide.
Here’s what I think makes sense to begin the process of moving us off the dime.
We should be paying attention to the Canadian initiative. But as far as I can tell, no one is. The press, IIAA, ACT, ACORD, IVANS, AUGIE, and U.S. vendors, for a start, should become keen observers of the interesting experiment being undertaken in Toronto. We need to be less parochial and more aware of ideas that come from outside our borders; that is, outside the box of our assumptions.
Fresh blood should be brought in to play leadership roles in the various boards and committees of industry groups. Too many veterans now in charge have neither the energy and enthusiasm to dream big thoughts nor the fight to make them real. Young agents have a vested interest in the future that some old-timers lack.
It isn’t the specifics of the CSIO portal experiment that’s the issue; it’s the fact that we’re becalmed and they’ve found the wind. We can too.
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