For an industry that is generally depicted as slow to accept new technologies, insurance agents are embracing online learning at an accelerating pace because Web courses offer more convenience and accessibility in fulfilling continuing education requirements, while avoiding costly and time-consuming trips out of the office, leading educators in the field contend.

Growth has been “spectacular, to say the least,” according to Bruce McMillan, president and chief executive officer of CEU.com. He estimated his number of users has just about doubled annually since the company was founded in 1999 to provide online education resources for insurance agents and adjusters.

Madelyn H. Flannagan, vice president of education and research for the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America, said that being online has given IIABA the opportunity to reach out to a “very different audience” of agents.

Through its Big “I” Virtual University, Ms. Flannagan said that agents can fulfill their continuing education requirements, and also obtain their Accredited Customer Service Representative designation for personal, commercial, or life and health lines. Echoing Mr. McMillan, she said the number of “virtual” Big I students has almost doubled every month since the school came online.

The agents who prefer the Web to do their continuing education, she observed, are the younger, busier types who “don't have the time” to attend traditional off-site classes and prefer the “anytime, anywhere” availability that online learning offers.

She added that online learning appeals to another demographic–procrastinators. There are those, she said, who come to the Big I Virtual University with a very specific need that she summarized as “my license is getting close to renewal, and I need the CE credit.”

Cynthia Davidson, vice president of insurance product management for Kaplan Financial, echoed that sentiment, noting that online learning is “a procrastinator's dream.”

There are other trends among users of Kaplan's online offerings, which includes 160 Web courses available for continuing education recognized in every state and the District of Colombia, she noted.

The use of online courses, Ms. Davidson said, “is very much split between business-to-business agents and business-to-customer agents,” with online learning being embraced more heavily among those dealing with commercial buyers.

Companies involved in solely commercial lines transactions feel more comfortable with online learning, she said, because it makes it easier for them to keep tabs on their agents' training and education. “They want it online because it's easier to track” an agent's progress and course history, she explained.

For those agents who deal more directly with individual personal lines consumers, online learning has “not so much” been accepted, although Ms. Davidson noted that usage among that group is growing through a clearly defined average user.

“It's very much a demographic,” she said, noting that the typical online learner is a younger agent who is more comfortable with online technology. However, older users are catching on, she added, saying that often the acclimation to online learning usually only involves a single course.

“Once they complete their first online course, the experience is very positive,” Ms. Davidson said.

Overall, online learning accounts for roughly 60 percent of Kaplan's insurance sales, she said–although the shift from a majority of more traditional education sales only occurred “very recently,” and 2006 would be the first year in which online courses made up the majority of sales.

Like CEU.com, Kaplan began offering its courses online in 1999 when the National Association of Insurance Commissioners first allowed the practice. Kaplan had offered printed courses for insurance agents for years prior to that, and those courses “became the first generation” of online learning, in which users effectively read the courses as a scrolling .html text Web page.

Similarly, the Big I Virtual University began as a direct reference for agents in 2000, with its initial course offering being made in late 2001, according to Ms. Flannagan. “We were just trying our hand,” to see if the online channel for education and other training would be viable.

More recently, the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents began offering its own online education program in conjunction with Learn.net.

PIA's program offers agents the opportunity to learn not only about the insurance industry, but also how to better manage their business, according to Alexi Papandon, assistant vice president of communications, who estimates that the number of users has increased “20 or 30 fold” in the 18 months since the program began.

PIA's program has its origins with some of its state affiliates, which raised the subject with the national association. “It was an opportunity we couldn't pass up,” he said.

The growth in online learning for insurance agents has been aided by the fact that those offering courses recognized the need to keep the technical requirements of their classes relatively low, ensuring that virtually any agency would have the capacity to take advantage of the opportunity. “If you've got a Web browser, you're in,” said IIABA's Ms. Flannagan, adding that the Virtual University has not had any significant problems.

Ms. Davidson said Kaplan has similar requirements. “It's a very low threshold,” she said. “All you need is a decent modem and decent connection speed.”

Just as agents must keep abreast of current issues in the industry, those offering training also have to keep an eye on what's happening, and what could become important.

Ms. Flannagan said IIABA works with its state affiliates and the NAIC to keep up with their needs. As an example, she said that new flood insurance requirements have been enacted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which are addressed in a Big I online course.

Ms. Davidson also talked about the new flood insurance requirements, but said Kaplan had decided not to create a course on them because they felt–as turned out to be the case–that FEMA would put out its own training materials for free.

The PIA, as part of its program, has also targeted issues that relate more directly to an agent's business needs, Mr. Papandon noted–specifically citing succession planning and agency transition.

As part of that effort, he said that PIA has started a Web site in partnership with 10 major insurance companies that helps guide agents through the business succession planning process.

“We took this on because it's important to everyone,” he said, noting that a “relatively high percentage” of agency owners are in their 50s and 60s.

Additionally, Ms. Davidson noted that, as with insurance regulation, serious efforts are ongoing to bring uniformity to the requirements for agent education.

The differences among the states can be a problem for companies such as Kaplan, she said, because not only does the company have to ensure its courses meet all of a particular state's requirements, but it also has to worry about what kind of credit the student will earn for taking them. For example, she said the same class could earn a student 25 hours credit in Utah, while only meriting six credit hours in nearby California.

What continues to be an issue, she said, is how online courses can be assessed. While some have suggested evaluating them by screen count–literally the number of different screens the student would view–Ms. Davidson argued that a word count and degree-of-difficulty evaluation would provide a more accurate depiction of the course.

Aside from the CE requirements in the NAIC's model law, Ms. Davidson said the ethic education requirement mandating three hours of ethics training in addition to the 24 hours of standard CE in the NAIC model law is also forcing Kaplan to stay on its toes.

Seventeen states have a classroom requirement for ethics–although seven of those have been lifted this year as states have approved the use of a “virtual classroom.” The thinking behind those decisions, she said, was largely that other educational opportunities can be done online, such as college classes.

The problem for those offering the “virtual classroom,” Ms. Davidson noted, is that “the states are all over the place” in defining what exactly a “virtual classroom” is. Kaplan, she said, is “still sizing up the market and figuring out what we can do,” but she said that among the proposals likely to end up winning approval would be a sort of conference call in which course students would use headsets to communicate with each other and the instructor.

“We already have it for securities,” she said, adding that Kaplan would want to “leverage already existing resources.”

Overall, Ms. Davidson said that while working toward uniformity, Kaplan and others involved in agent training work with individual state regulators to ensure that their products can and will be acceptable and effective. “We're trying to protect ourselves,” she said, “because sometimes the rules can be impossible to follow.”