The Carrier Challenge

While agents want real-time transactions, he notes, carriers face challenges in providing such transactions. "Automating the rating rules, and rules in general, that allow for that is a challenge," he explains, indicating Chubb provides "very customized products," so that trying to automate product development becomes more difficult.

Some agents want "one-stop shopping" that enables them to do all of their transactions from a single portal, Knight says, but he concedes where agents are dealing with multiple carriers, that functionality must extend to all agents without requiring them to visit each portal. Chubb has been evaluating projects involving upload and download, which the company already offers for personal lines, according to Knight. "The commercial side is the challenge, because it is a more complex product, and there are many different products," he contends. Another complicating factor is Chubb has "many policy administration systems, and we have our share of legacy systems," he says.

The overall goal of Chubb's projects in this area, however, is to increase ease of doing business for agents, he affirms. "We have a soft market now, but we'll have a hard market eventually. It's very important to keep our agent population happy."

Knight says he wants agents to know when it comes to expanding real-time capabilities, "we're absolutely working on it," including a special initiative in the commercial lines area. The company is holding meetings with its "cornerstone agents" to get feedback that will help in developing the capabilities agents want, he adds.

The company also is "big on predictive modeling" and recently has implemented a workers' compensation model, states Knight.

In terms of underwriting, he says, "one price doesn't fit all. We're developing tiered pricing based on the predictive modeling algorithms. That allows us to get there sooner and identify fraud sooner, so everybody's happy. We are hot on this area, and we are innovating on the claims side," he continues. "Tiered pricing makes us more competitive."

Working Toward a Perfect World

Addressing the issue of systems integration for agents, Knight suggests, "in a perfect world, agents would have one place to go to do all their transactions–their agency management systems." While that doesn't happen now, he reports Chubb is working with agency management system vendors to bring it closer to reality.

Chubb announced in May it is offering its agents and brokers the ability to download automatically personal and commercial lines claims information into their agency management systems.

"Working with Applied Systems, the claims download was developed in response to agents' desire to have immediate access to the entire claims workflow directly from their agency management systems," the company says. "It all goes back to ease of doing business," Knight emphasizes.

What about agents who have the ability to access real-time tools from their carriers but choose not to use them? "There is momentum for agents to use real-time technology, just as there has been for carriers to provide it," he comments. "This is the way it is now. We all have to adapt. The world is changing."

He adds, however, if an agent still wants to conduct transactions the old way–and the agent has enough "clout"–Chubb may accommodate that and conduct business via traditional channels.

Chubb's biggest challenge related to agent relations, Knight says, is "the massive size of legacy replacement on all sides." He points out legacy replacement is ongoing at Chubb, adding, "we are investing in new technology in every area of the company.

"Chubb is a very thoughtful company," he concludes. "When it comes to making decisions, once we commit to it, we complete it. Agility may suffer a bit, but the commitment is there."