Mobilehas quickly become a necessity for businesses and it's yet another area where mid-size and especially smaller carriers are at risk of falling behind because consumers don't expect any less of those companies just because they are smaller.

Will a big direct writer always have a better, snazzier app? Sure. Do consumers necessarily care about that? No, as long as they can get what they need to get done on the app, they are generally going to be happy.

That being said, historically what we've seen happen is vendors—particularly policy vendors—tend to add these functionalities as a differentiator so they can go to carriers and say, “If you used our system you would have a mobile app by now.” I think we'll see more of that as policy vendors, portal vendors and stand-alone app vendors come out stronger in the market. There will be options for insurers, but you have to have something out there now or really soon.

There is always something that causes the smaller carriers to struggle to keep up with the larger carriers. This is not one of them. This is one of those things, that because of their size the larger carriers got into first because it wasn't a big bill for them. It's a low enough cost that anybody that wants to be a mobile leader can be.