Theres no doubt that the Internet is a wonderful technology. Over the last five years or so weve heard about the ways it will impact the insurance industry. At first, the Internet was expected to overturn existing distribution arrangements, whether through dot-coms or incumbent carriers.

More recently, its thought the Internet may best be put to work helping carriers serve their agents and agents their customers. 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. Youre probably familiar with them all and have an informed opinion about whats right for your company.

But there are other, perhaps more important issues relating to the Internet that are being ignoredeither because theyre invisible or because we havent appreciated their potential impact. Ill touch on three: the certain failure of the Internet, the misuse of capital, and the overselling of remote Web services. All three could prove disastrous to the insurance industry.