Agency-Carrier Automation Guidance

Invest in a customized analysis of how the various agency interface (A/I) options on the market today will assist you in meeting your unique corporate initiatives and thus avoid the expensive mistakes made by other companies.

Problem Statement – No company can afford a failed A/I initiative. In order to be competitive, insurance companies need to offer agents the path of least resistance for placing their business and they need to present this solution in a manner that agents are willing to use. The risk and potential cost of failure includes technology costs, training of support/maintenance resources, the opportunity cost of a better option, and potential loss of credibility and more importantly premium with the agents if this solution does not meet their business and workflow needs. In pursuit of a solution, companies encounter the following challenges:

• Growing Business –In order to stay competitive the company must adopt a standard yet cost-effective approach to its agency automation and support. By empowering an agency with some common yet minimal functionality like “Quick Quoting” and “Policy Lookup” companies can support the agents in their selling process. Companies that are looking to significantly expand their territories and/or market share must be sensitive to the needs of their dynamic agency base.
• Controlling Costs – Cost reduction is always foremost in the minds of an insurance company's management team. The implementation of a successful A/I is imperative to the success of this objective and is achieved by reducing the manual “back and forth” processes between agency and company personnel, thereby engaging underwriters and producers in more value-add activities.

Managing Multiple Insurance Systems – Any A/I implementation will prove to be a substantial investment for a company. Most companies do not have the luxury to implement a variety of solutions or patches to solutions to support the variety of policy processing systems and databases they maintain. As such it is vital to architect an A/I solution that meets your agent needs, integrates with your current systems and is still flexible and scalable enough to accept future upgrades or architecture changes.

The Right Approach - The value of an A/I solution is contained in the process and synergies gained in the “value chain” between agents and companies on behalf of the insured. It's easy to get carried away with the technology and make assumptions about the return on your investment. Any insurance company contemplating an A/I initiative needs an overview of possible solutions available in the market so that they can match these options against current needs as well as against budget and time constraints. The management teams of small insurance companies acknowledge that the risk of making a wrong IT decision can be very expensive. Deliberating for the sake of risk reduction is worth the time.

Info724's 2-Day Agency-Carrier Analysis Offering
Info724 will play an advisory role for roughly 2 days of raw effort, which can be spread across several weeks if appropriate. Some of the key deliverables we provide:

• Quick assessment of a company's unique business needs in regard to A/I and high-level review of your book of business and distribution model.
• A lessons-learned document that outlines more than a dozen approaches to A/I.
• Analysis of systems architecture to serve as a baseline for developing A/I solution alternatives.
• Presentation of primary options available to the company for A/I to support management decision making.
• Guide the client sponsor or project team with a best practices document to avoid common mistakes before engaging in an A/I initiative.