How one Insurer has Automated Underwriting
Posted by David Gallagher on Fri, Jun 04, 2010 @ 12:25 PM
At this year's ACORD LOMA Annual Forum, one of iter8's satisfied (very satisfied might be a better phrase) customers presented "How one Insurer has Automated Underwriting". The 60 minute session provided them with an opportunity to review what they had done to maximize the effectiveness of their agent portal, and how they successfully grew their business while controlling costs using technology provided by iter8. They use both communic8 and collabor8 in the development of a modern, connected agent portal.
The presentation was very well received, attended by well over 100 interested insurance carriers, analysts, and software vendors. The audience came to hear how this carrier, La Capitale Group, provided their independent producers with several ways to interact easily, quickly and completely.
This was done through a state-of-the-art portal and connectivity to agent management systems, supported by strong business processes and underwriter responsiveness. Transactions such as policy endorsements could begin with an Agency Management System, upload the portal in real-time, validate the change, complete any items specific to the carrier or correct any errors or omissions, rate the new actions, store the new information and provide a record of the change to the Agency Management System. They prepared a five minute demo to show this occurring in real-time during the presentation.
Based upon the attendees at the previous days ACT (Agent's Council for Technology) Meetings, it is clear many carriers do not offer such functionality, which agents badly need. Tom Minkler, who presented details of the IIABA's Consumer Agent Portal Initiative, mentioned "the independent agent channel is losing 1% market share in personal lines annually, which represents $2.8 billion dollars" Not chump change, and a trend that independent agents, and the carriers that go to market in this manner want to change.
Independent agents need to work with carriers to map out the how's and when's. As iter8's customer demonstrated, the technology exists, the challenge is to get carriers and agents to work together to make such investments, and maximize the effectiveness of the investment once it is made.