Does your agency suffer from tech phobia?
Fear of new technology in the workplace is real, but there's no reason for agents and brokers to be afraid.
How does tech phobia manifest within insurance organizations?
It might be the fear of asking an already overworked staff to add one more thing — the implementation of a new technology project — to their busy schedules.
Fear can also be connected to making a financial investment in technology, which is oftentimes considerable, and then discovering it fails to truly solve the business problem for which it was procured.
I can tell you, however, that there is no reason for agents and brokers to fear technology.
At Arthur Hall Insurance, I serve as executive vice president and agency principal as well as chief information security officer. My first foray into technology was with mainframe computers at a vocational technology school. So I have seen the evolution of mainframes to PCs to every variation of a personal-computing device.
Here’s what I have learned: Technology can be empowering. It helps our industry remain competitive, and plenty of educational options exist that can make the digitization process much easier than many might expect.
Insurance tech resources abound
One of the beauties of our industry is that our trade associations and some of their committees are tremendous resources. With almost any technology that comes my way, there’s a high probability that I can find a group that has implemented it before. Shared conversations and experiences with user groups have dramatically shortened my learning cycle.
Consider the Agents Council for Technology (ACT), which is part of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, or the Big I®. When New York passed its cybersecurity regulation governing financial institutions, ACT had already written relevant white papers. The industry group had cyber experts conversing on the topic of how an agency can comply with the standards, and it even had a list of vendors to help agencies achieve their tech objectives.
Several of the industry tech vendors also support education and networking. With the Vertafore AMS 360 agency management system, for instance, there’s the Network of Vertafore Users (NetVU), which provides networking, education and industry advocacy for agency, carrier, MGA and compliance organizations. I get daily emails from this group, so I can see the topics that users are conversing about.
These organizations are vital to the insurance business. They provide a forum for people in similar roles to exchange technology information. Many insurance tech groups also provide training opportunities and boast a robust catalogue of topical webinars.
All of this is designed to help agents, brokers and other insurance pros coordinate and get up to speed quickly. The coordination part is critical since many of today’s technology offerings integrate with other systems. Carriers all have their own systems, which are sometimes integrated with third-party vendors. These vendors may try to talk to different agency management systems that, in turn, might be integrated with other third-party vendors.
And then there are additional layers of integration from organizations such as ACORD and Ivans, for example, which work to create and map universal standards, so different parties can integrate and share information seamlessly.
To be sure, some training and education programs can be expensive. The training part will often have a material cost in the thousands of dollars. But when you consider the time savings in dollars that technology can bring to an organization, the expenditure is usually a no-brainer. Programs can pay for themselves quickly.
Tech leads and product managers
It is important to engage with technology and not fear it. But there’s a nuance to consider. An agency that wants to digitize and improve its operations with technology must remember that effective technology helps advance operations. It should move your organization forward by helping save time in some shape or form, whether it’s by having more data to make better decisions faster, or financial savings achieved when a single technology solution replaces two or more separate systems.
When it comes to agency-technology implementation, there needs to be an outcome. For example, a success would be that you’ve taken two hours a week and given it back to your revenue-producing people.
You don’t want to engage technology just for the purpose of doing technology better. That’s just feeding the “technology monster” that consumes time and resources with nothing material to show for it.
While insurance industry offers plenty of educational opportunities, insurers probably fulfill this function better than many others. But agencies investing in technology and the education to support it also need one more important ingredient: A lead technology person who can hyper-focus on the true return on investment.
Agents and brokers hoping to embrace new technology should also hone their skills as project managers so they can successfully implement these modern tools. In addition, it is important for organizations to make sure they have the full buy-in of senior leaders seeking to modernize their operations.
My other advice is to stay focused on outcomes, and make sure that technology moves you in the strategic direction that all parties at an organization have agreed on.
That’s where technology education is key. Digitization can be learned. Agents and brokers can tap into many learning opportunities, from webinars to white papers and advice from consultants who are available to accelerate their successes.
Mark Sammarone has worked for Arthur Hall Insurance for nearly 23 years and is currently the company’s executive vice president and agency principal. He can be reached at mds@arthurhall.com.
These opinions are the author’s own.
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