Insurance Journal Forums

Hello All:

Today I received a letter from a Municipality that one of our clients counts as a major customer. Apparently the city has contracted with a certificate tracking service to track their certs. Use of this tracking service is mandatory.

The service is called Ins-Cert.com I have checked out their web page and have had a conversation with their President....which was frustrating to say the least! He eventually hung up on me.

By the way...for me (their agent) their is a cost of $3.00 to register each client and $0.25 for each cert holder! His statement was that it can cost an agent $30.00 and more to issue a single cert...I confronted him on that and he backed away. It costs us nowhere near that amount to issue certs and we issue LOTS of certs every day.

Has anyone used them? Any feed back? Comments?

Here are my issues:

1. Sounds like a great opportunity to create
X-Date sales opportunities down the road
(course he denied that would ever happen,
but who is to say what will happen in the future?)

2. I see opportunity for a person to create more
cert fraud by acting as agency and entering
info as if they were the insurance agency.

3. As the agent I will have now increased my
tasks on certs. I will still have to send
something to my carrier and will still
have to enter something in my system in
addition to their system. I would also have
to enter cancellation info on their site.

4. Our agency happens to underwriter certs.
We are nowhere as diligent as we were a
year ago...but we still do not issue
"all operations" certs and still make sure
that certs are not issued on Bids.

5. I am concerned with web security.
Goes back to the issue of xdate farming
and selling. It was when I asked this
question that they hung up on my call.


In defense of the guy I was speaking to (President of the co)...I was beating him up pretty well over his grand "sales" statements (Cuts your costs, easy to use...)

I managed to search some of the agents who do use their service (by entering "insurance" as a search function on their agency registration page) and got a decent list of agents from across the country.

By the way...did I mention that the President is registered as an active agent in the State of Colorado? Conflict of interest??????

Well,

If you look at the demonstration certificate, they seem to be showing a lot of business with Elbonia:
Elbonia governmental administration building
Elbonian Consulate building
Aramu Muala, President of Elbonia
Elbonia Electric Co
Central Bank of Elbonia

If you aren't familiar with Elbonia, they are the guys who use cardboard boxes for computers and are infamous out-sourcers.

But seriously, it seems that in most cases you could charge a cert service fee and tack it on couldn't you?

And yes, maybe it does look like something Dogbert Consulting dreamed up, but that doesn't make the concept invalid. Maybe there is a better service out there you can suggest? Or perhaps an Agency Management System that will output them?

Yes I could pass the cost along (and would) and my client could in turn pass along to their client.

But think this way...lets say there are 10 seperate tracking vendors like this one...and lets say that you have a few clients that are involved with each...and a cancellation comes in ... and you now have to go and enter the cancellation ....but do not..... Or even better...somone checks the wrong box, say showing coverage that is not there...and there is a claim...what happens now?

The better concept (imo) is that the vendor input the info from the cert.

Actually,

The best thing is to KILL silly sites like this. The state should require insurance companies to send a simple XML cert whenever a policy for ANY line is issued, changed, or canceled. The state would also provide a cert lookup service.

This allows the people to check if doctors, lawyers, contractors have insurance very easily. It also solves the issue of various licensing and policing authorities carrying out their duties with regards to insurance. For example, very simple to hook up a vehicle check to the DB and have it see if there is valid insurance on a vehicle stop. Very simple for companies to check for multiline discounts.

I am sorry, I just can't help but laugh...you want the state to require carriers to issue certs when a policy is cancelled, changed or issued? And put all this into a public database? The carrier issues the policy, and any endorsements, to the agent. Part of why you get commission is to service the account. That's what a cert is, part of the servicing. That is certainly not something you want the government to do. InMyHumbleOpinon.

Laugh all you want.

Truth is, having the insurance carriers policy management system automatically update the state database is in fact easily doable and is currently being done is some states. The carrier does not issue the cert, the state provides it via the web.

99% of agents are trustworthy, but all we read here in the Journal, is case after case of agents getting licenses revoked and going to jail.

If the process is automated, it removes the human element. It allows a policy to be issued and looked up in realtime, not agent time or carrier time. Its BETTER for your customers and your customers customers. Agents that find new ways to serve their customers will be here, those that don't, will not. Used to be agents rated policies by hand, I dare you or anyone to do that with a company like Progressive, who is going to hypercube rating. The number of variable permutations is in the trillions.

Either we change, or we get left behind.

I don't know... I do all the certs for all of my clients and i do it at no cost to the client

I am still laughing, honestly....certificates are worth no more than the paper on which they are printed. If you want to be certain coverage exists, order a true copy of the policy. Otherwise, it's a gamble all the way around if coverage exists, if it's been exhausted by other losses, etc. Having the state involved in another aspect of commerce will only delay and confuse the issue, not help it.

Exactly,

As you said, a cert issued by an agent is worth no more than the paper its printed on. Which is why having the carrier's system automatically, in realtime, update a state system is better. The state can prescribe fines and actions for carriers that do not update correctly. Thereby, looking up a cert on the state website, would be worth something! Realtime would allow a cert to be looked up within seconds of the policy being issued, canceled, or changed by the carrier.

Isn't that what we all want? Great service for our customers!

See, the part I don't like is the state getting anymore involved in our day to day workings than they have to be. You can't really believe any state government can be efficient and responsive. And the carriers pay the price with less freedom in the marketplace. This isn't the direction we should be going.

But that's just my opinion, I am a free-market kind of girl.

What does invoking "Big Goverment" have to do with this?

The state would not be involved in your day to day, nor the carriers. The state is updated programmatically in realtime as the carrier systems issue policies and changes. This involves no human intervention other than to set it up. Thats the beauty of automation and realtime.

This does not take any freedom from the carrier.
This is not anti-free market. It promotes it.

Or, ... maybe you want folks to see the doctor and have no idea if they are insured. Use a contractor, and not know. See an attorney, and not know if they are insured? Or are you just pegged because folks can do this without the intervention of the almighty insurance agent?