The great American philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “It's deja vu all over again.” That's the phrase I recalled as I edited for the gazillionith time an article about how so many benefits of the technology revolution have somehow eluded property-casualty agents, brokers and insurers.

Last week's story focused on the fact that the Agents Council for Technology, which is affiliated with the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, had released a report urging agents to force the issue of online service. “The Real-Time Revolution: Redefining How We Work” takes nothing for granted, going so far as to define what a “real time” transaction is in a P-C insurance context.

(Don't laugh. Can you define the term? It is pretty simple: Basically, it means agents asking something of their carriers or managing general agents using their computer seeking a quote, making a claims query, posing a policy coverage question and then either receiving a “prompt” response in kind, receiving a link to find the answer themselves, or being able to begin a transaction electronically.)

“We hope that the report will convince agents and brokers to get involved in what we consider to be a revolution,” said ACT Executive Director Jeff Yates who, over the years, has exhibited the faith and patience of Job in fighting to overcome incredibly basic logistical challenges to agency efficiency. “We are not talking about a few applications in this report but a whole revolution in technology. We need [agents] to get involved and get working on embracing this technology.”

What can agents do to advance the cause? According to ACT, they must take the initiative, readily adopting real-time technology to prove to insurers that there is really a demand for such service. “Implementation by large numbers of the agency force provides a powerful message to the carriers that these workflow improvements are important to agents,” the report said.

This is an absurd situation. Of course agents and carriers should be interacting electronically to cut costs and improve efficiency. So why isn't “real time” a reality? Most likely, insurers are still concerned that if they are too plugged in, their products and services will become more commoditized and price-driven. Meanwhile, agents have been so worried about alienating a tech-challenged carrier (especially in a hard market) that they are reluctant to push them to the wall.

It is this same tragic myopia that has vexed the folks at ACORD for so many years in their search for the industry's Holy Grail single-entry, multiple-company interface.

As the report notes (warns?), consumers are already doing “real time” transactions in banking, paying bills or buying airline tickets and they are bound to expect the same level of service from their insurance agents and carriers.

If I were to “go back to sleep” and awake in another 22 years, would anything have changed? It has to, and dramatically, if today's insurers are to survive. The next generation of tech-savvy consumers (who now, as teenagers, spend more time on the Internet than watching TV) will accept nothing less than “real time,” all the time.

Sam Friedman

Editor-In-Chief

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, March 19, 2004. Copyright 2004 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.