Too Many Speed Bumps Online
A glance through this week's “Technology Trends” special report, “Insurance on the Web,” demonstrates that insurance agents and companies still have a long way to go to get up to speed with their online operations.
Sure, it's encouraging that agent access to the Internet is up from 8 percent in 1996 to 93 percent last year, according to the Independent Insurance Agents of Americas “Agency Universe Study 2000.” However, while 97 percent with Internet access use e-mail, only 36 percent have Web sites, 27 percent receive and send claims over the Web, and a mere 8 percent send documents to clients online.
Meanwhile, NU's annual online shopping trek by our tech editor, Ara Trembly, revealed that auto insurance buyers still have a relatively hard time surfing for coverage over the Web. Insurer sites and multi-insurer Web malls have yet to deliver reliable value and quality service online.
Insurers and agents had better get their online acts together fast because an entire generation of Web-savvy consumers is entering the market. Indeed, a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in Washington found that 73 percent of young people between 12 and 17 are regularly using the Net. Newsday reported that these kids are “well on their way to creating virtual livesdoing everything from breaking up to schoolwork online.”
Perhaps insurance will never successfully be sold on a mass basis online–we question the wisdom of shopping for coverage without an agent's help. But we have no doubt that consumers will demand 24-hour access to their accounts online, as well as the ability to surf for reliable price quotes, send and receive questions via e-mail, as well as ship and receive documents over the Web. Insurers and agents that can't handle life in the online world will be as useless as a typewriter pretty soon, if they aren't already.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, August 20, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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