"[A]gencies need to reward those companies which respond to agency needs for more efficient interfaces with a growing book of business, so that these company investments yield an appropriate return to the company," added the paper, approved by the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America National Board of State Directors here this week during the Alexandria, Va.-based association's annual conference.

While agents enjoy "several benefits" because carriers have moved quickly to "Web-enable" their inquiry, rating and processing functions, as well as implement automated underwriting systems, "the proliferation of company Web sites?has also created some real headaches" for producers, the paper said.

Proprietary company Web sites, according to ACT, "have left the job half done" because they create as many problems as they do benefits. "This growing agent frustration was expressed dramatically in the recent ACORD/AUGIE survey" of some 9,000 agencies, ACT noted (see NU, May 27, page 5).

The main problem is that while some data can be found in real time, the process of getting to that information is time-consuming and inefficient, ACT said.

The paper argues that even if information on insurer Web sites are available in "real-time" to agents for policy questions, billing or claims, "it often is not feasible to keep a customer on the phone because of the time spent logging in to the company Web site, resulting in phone tag and the agent's inability in many cases to respond to the customer in real-time" as a result.

ACT complained that agents not only have to log-on to multiple Web sites to shop a piece of business, but also must initiate different log-in procedures and passwords, thereby forcing re-entry of data, wasting time, raising costs, and increasing the potential for mistakes.

Further aggravating the situation, ACT said, is the need to teach agency staff how to access each unique insurer system, creating a "training nightmare."

"We have an historic opportunity to harness new standards and technologies to realize both the benefits of real-time processing as well as new efficiencies for agents operating in a multiple-company environment," said ACT Chairman Ed Higgins Jr. "The need today to enter data and log-ons multiple times, and to deal with significant variations in workflow company-by-company simply is inefficient."

"The commitment to adopt the ACT vision and follow through with steps to realize that vision is critical to achieving greater efficiencies for the independent insurance agent distribution channel," added ACT Executive Director Jeff Yates. "We have received a very clear message from the industry that the active involvement of agency principals across the country in pressing for these issues is critical to attaining our objective."

ACT recommends that companies, agents and vendors take four steps to improve agent-company interfaces:

? Set a clear objective within each organization to participate in industry standards-based initiatives to achieve multiple-company, real-time interfaces between agency management systems and companies, and other agency partners.

? Place priority on implementing the ACORD XML standards and real-time processing with business partners.

? Improve agency efficiency when using company Web sites by streamlining log-ins and navigation, bridging as much data as possible from agency systems, and designing sites to be more intuitive.

? Focus on improving deficiencies with downloads of data to agents, and improve agency understanding of effective download implementation.

The full text of the paper is available at www.independentagent.com. ACT is a group of agents, carriers, user groups, vendors and associations assembled by IIABA to promote and facilitate effective technology use and business processes within the independent agency system.