One area that did evoke some surprise among a few audience members was how respondents said their agencies budgeted for technology. According to AUGIE, 48 percent of respondents said their agencies pay for technology as needed, while 41 percent said it is part of the annual budget, and 11 percent “didnt know.” “AUGIE believes that budgeting for technology should be a matter of course,” Mr. Gilman stated.

Another area that surprised some audience participants was that 81 percent of respondents said their agencies have broadband Internet connections instead of dial-up. Thirteen percent said they were using dial-up modems, while 6 percent reported they had no Internet connection.

Mr. Gilman said the survey showed that 45 percent of agencies doing $150,000 a year or less in business use dial-up connections. He also noted that larger agencies were more likely to have their own Web sites.

Asked about their biggest challenges in technology, 91 percent of respondents predictably said that learning and using an insurance company's proprietary systems was at the top of the list. Mr. Gilman added that 37 percent said a significant challenge was the time and expense involved in keeping up with emerging technology, while 15 percent cited time and expense for education and training related to technology in general.

Mr. Gilman noted that as the size of the agency increased, the need to educate and train became a more important challenge.

Top among interface challenges were proprietary carrier systems (48 percent) and duplicate data entry (29 percent), Mr. Gilman reported.

Respondents said the biggest time wasters are duplicate data entry (50 percent), proprietary systems (28 percent), and manual verification of upload and download (11 percent), said Mr. Gilman.

When asked how carriers should spend their technology dollars, a majority of survey respondents said the money should go toward establishing single-entry transactions and “away from company-specific, duplicate entry,” Mr. Gilman reported.

Would real-time transactions help agency workflow? According to Mr. Gilman, 90 percent of respondents strongly agree or somewhat agree that it would.

Mr. Gilman summarized the surveys “key findings” as follows:

All agents should budget for technology.

Agents and carriers need to operate on the latest technologies.

A Web site should be part of an agencys strategic plan.

Duplicate entry and proprietary systems are significant barriers to an efficient workflow.

While he conceded that agents expressed many “wishes,” Mr. Gilman said that not all of the wished-for changes are “doable” at present. One such wish he cited is real time, Web-based comparative rating, which he called “not realistic” at the moment.

He noted that interim steps–including education, developing a Web presence, and having standards fully engaged–would have to be taken by agencies first. He declined to speculate on how long it might take for agencies to complete those steps.

As for AUGIEs next steps, Mr. Gilman said the group would “determine what the exact messages and recommendations will be” coming out of the survey, and what the time frame would be for disseminating such information. Mr. Gilman also noted that AUGIE would seek to develop a series of agency case histories and a “best practices concept.” AUGIE also will make an industry-wide push to upgrade systems, he noted.

Mr. Gilman reported that 60 percent of respondents would support an industry-wide database that contained their technology profile information in a secured format. “This would cut down on the need for companies to send out surveys that ask the same questions,” he explained.

While AUGIE is “looking into” this idea, however, Mr. Gilman said there would probably be focus groups and more in-depth research first.

AUGIE was formed in August 2000, and the agent survey was launched Jan. 2 of this year, lasting through Feb. 19. A total of 40 questions were asked of agents, principals and customer service representatives regarding their wants and needs in technology, said Mr. Gilman.

Fifty-seven percent of the respondents were principals, and more than half of the respondents were responsible for both commercial and personal lines. Seventy-five percent of the respondents were senior management, he said.

Approximately 43 percent of respondents said their agencies used an agency management system from Applied Systems, while about 36 percent identified AMS Services Inc. as their agency automation vendor.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, May 27 2002. Copyright 2002 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.