Note: These articles first appeared in John Ashenhurst's column in Technology Decisions.
A major, U.S. P&C carrier is piloting a turnkey, unobtrusive, and transparent service that makes it easy to retain the benefits of its Web site while satisfying its agents' need for single-entry and consistent workflow.
Carriers aren’t going to stop building self-service portals for their agents. But carrier Web sites aren’t compatible with agency automation and thus cause problems for agents. How can both carriers and agents get what they want? Through the use of Hybrid Interface. Here’s how it could work.
Once a chancy proposition, offshore development services have matured and provide a practical, cost-effective way to build and maintain the new generation of Web-based policy, claims, and other systems carriers increasingly need to re-engineer their business processes and compete more effectively.
Your can buy what someone has already done or you can roll your own -but if you do can you get it done this century? Will it work? Will you be able to maintain it? But there's another approach. Using an insurance-specific toolset may provide the leverage you need. Here's a report on something new, FocalPoint V2.
Until recently carriers and agents often used different rating technology and got different answers. New offerings may solve some of today's problems and create an environment for solving tomorrow's as well.
IIAA Best Practices, Future One, AUGIE, and ACT provide insight into what agents really expect in the way of technology from their carrier partners. Here's what they say and how to find out more.
Many business and technology related books are soporifics but the four discussed below address some important industry questions and provide researched, creative, and sometimes unexpected answers.
Carriers say they need new technology, vendors claim to have it, but sales don't materialize. What's the problem?
Early in 2002, Canadian brokers will be able to go to one Web site, the CSIO Insurance Portal, to get accurate and up to date comparative quotes as well as do inquiry and policy maintenance into multiple carrier system using standard screens.
Commonly recognized Internet issues include proprietary carrier Web sites versus multi-carrier arrangements, single-solution XML versus standard ACORD XML, straight-through versus single-step processing, and so on. There are other issues as well. You're probably familiar with them all and have an informed opinion about what's right for your company.
But there are other, perhaps more important issues relating to the Internet that are being ignored — either because they're invisible or because we haven't appreciated their potential impact. I'll touch on three
Independent agency carriers are not likely to succeed by selling direct through the Internet. If they abandon their agency sales force they will see premium fall and claims rise. On the other hand, if they attempt to sell in parallel with their agents they will lose their agents' trust and muddy the relationship with the insured.
Carriers that rank high on the Gomez insurance Web site index probably congratulate themselves on their good luck — the result, of course, of hard work, creativity, and spending in the nine or ten-digit range. But what if these high-ranking carriers are doing a very good job playing the wrong game?
If direct Internet selling doesn't make sense as a business strategy for agency carriers, what does? Does the Internet have a strategic business role to play? Where should carriers place their bets? The right answers, in my view, may defy conventional wisdom.
Can the industry finally exhale and get back to really critical issues — such as whether a correcting market is in the offing? Or is there something about the Internet that is very important to the industry though perhaps not what was initially imagined and sold?