e-Business Moving Slowly but Steadily For Wholesalers

The insurance industry is beginning to utilize technology to more efficiently conduct business, but that integration is a long, slow process, according to a panel of wholesalers and market leaders.

Shand Morahan & Company Inc. recently hosted a live teleconference to discuss “e-Business in the Wholesale Marketplace.” Among the industry representatives were Tom McNally, e-business marketing, Shand Morahan & Co. in Deerfield, Ill.; Gail Strejc, marketing, Shand; Kevin Kershisnik, AVP, ECM Insurance Services LLC in Irvine, Calif.; Mitch Dunford, associate publisher/web, Insurance Journal in San Diego; and Nick Cortezi, CEO, All Risks in Timonium, Md.

All the panelists agreed that getting information to the retail agents as quickly as possible was key.

As a result, e-mail is used more and more frequently to send quotes, but there is still a heavy reliance on the fax machine. “We send things in e-mail attachments as well as a fax, and half the time, [agents] end up retyping the document rather than cut-and-paste,” Cortezi said.

“It’s a dual system—both a paper and a paperless environment,” Kershisnik agreed. “I don’t see that changing anytime soon, simply because of the nature of the product. Sometimes we just have to go and pull the file.”

Will the concept of SEMCI ever become reality? The panelists were divided on this topic. “We know that SEMCI is coming and we are attuned so that we will be ready when we need to be,” Cortezi said.

Yet, “I don’t know if SEMCI is ever going to happen,” Kershisnik mused. “There is a lot of hype but not a lot of substance…The retail agents want to hear that they can just send an application once and be done, but the insurers are far behind the financial service providers as far as technology.”

According to Dunford, XML is the way the future is headed. “There are a number of companies pushing the ASP model with XML,” he said. “Those who use independent agents as their salesforce need to look at how technology meets their needs; so that if a number of agency management systems start coming out using ASP and XML technology and more and more agents adopt it, those agents will be looking for MGAs and carriers whose software can talk to that.”

McNally concurred. “We think [XML] is where the industry’s going, and it’s important that carriers and anyone else involved in the process share the same technology,” he said. “Some companies look at technology as an every-10-year investment—we look at it as an everyday operational cost.”

Topics Agencies Tech