After surveying independent life insurance producers for a report from Celent, Craig Weber, a senior analyst in the research firm's insurance practice, found life agents are becoming increasingly technology savvy as carriers are focusing more attention in the direction of the agents. In the past, Weber asserts, most multiline carriers have focused their technology initiatives on the property/casualty side, particularly with tools such as agency management systems and agency management interfaces. However, today, "some of the technology approaches have found their way into the higher-end, non-commoditized markets, such as life insurance and annuities," he says.
Not as many life producers use agency management systems as do their counterparts in P&C, Weber indicates, but the ones who use these systems are diehard users. The Celent survey found 38 percent of life agencies surveyed don't have agency management systems, but 25 percent of the respondents report using their system several times a day, and another 12 percent report daily usage.
"My advice to carriers is to support multiple means of working with agents because some agents will use agency management systems and others will go to proprietary carrier sites," says Weber. "You really need to do a variety of things to ensure you are available to all your agents."
Although a carrier's proprietary Web site is the preferred method of entering new business for life producers, Celent found the percentage of respondents who replied they often use such proprietary systems has fallen from 55 percent to 51 percent in the last year. Weber believes it is difficult to judge whether the preference for carrier Web sites is a cause or an effect of a carrier's particular strategy. "[Carrier systems] generally are highly customized, so it is hard to capture forms in agency management systems and transmit them because every carrier's application is different," he says. "I think that's why the data-entry question [in the survey] was answered [the way it was]," which, Weber explains, refers to the fact 71 percent of producers and agency principals enter the data on electronic applications rather than have customer service representatives perform the task. "A lot of that data entry occurs at the point of sale in an interactive way with the client," says Weber. "The agent clearly needs to be involved in that process. As we transition away from paper, we'll see fewer agents completing the paper application and handing it off to someone else. It generally is more efficient to do that all in one step."
Weber is seeing growth in the use of handheld computing devices and PDAs, he reports. A sizeable majority of life agents still haven't bought into this technology (68 percent), but 17 percent of those responding say they use their PDAs several times a day. "There was more growth in the use of this technology than I expected," he says. "Some of that is driven by other trends."
Weber doesn't expect to see agents purchase handheld devices to access new-business or pending new-business information, but he sees agents using the handheld devices to access e-mail and contact information. "Agents prefer e-mail as a communications tool over everything else," he says. "[Agents] are accustomed to being connected at all times, and carriers need to reflect that in their technology strategy. To the extent agents use those tools for their own personal productivity, that means they have those tools, and maybe the carriers can leverage them for [the carriers'] needs, as well."
As for e-signature acceptance, the technology and the fear factor have changed sufficiently so that agents no longer are concerned about the security issue for their clients. "[Customers] understand the benefits clearly outweigh the risks," Weber points out. Most customers are accustomed to handing over their credit-card information at every opportunity and would not question an insurance agent who had a well-designed e-signature process. "[Producers and carriers] have to demonstrate they are concerned about customer data and privacy," he concludes. "Agents and companies doing that shouldn't have any problem at all."
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