Reinsurance is an important part of the insurance industry, so theres no good reason that the process has to be difficult. The reason Manulife Financial was having problems dealing with its reinsurers for large life insurance policies, in what is called a facultative submission, was that so much paperwork had to be exchanged between the two sidesit would take a week or more just to find out if the reinsurer was interested. Multiply that by sixthe typical number of reinsurers Manulife contacts for a particular policyand you have a mountain of paper and a ton of waiting.

For a typical policy, we would have to copy 200 pages of documents six times, said Glenn Beuschel, team leader for Manulifes U.S. reinsurer ceded administration area. It would take several days to a week to get such a fat file delivered by courier to the reinsurers, who would then gauge how much (if any) of the risk it was willing to take on.

Beuschel said the company wanted to use the Internet to send such files electronically, but it felt it needed a secure Web site to protect everyone involved in the transaction. AgoraINS (Insurance Network Solutions) had just such a product and came to Manulife in 1999 to offer a demonstration and ask the Toronto-based life insurer to take part in a pilot of the Web site (www.agorare.com).