Revolutionary technology supporting agent-carrier collaboration is in widespread deployment. Known as Web Services, these technologies will play a critical role in determining the agent and carrier winners in tomorrow’s insurance market.
For the past several years there has been a lot of hype surrounding the Internet but the insurance industry is finally getting down to business when it comes to utilizing the Web effectively to provide better services to customers and agents, taking operational efficiencies to new levels. As insurance companies increase their adoption of Web Services and implement J2EE and .NET technologies, the agent who has an appreciation for these technologies can work more effectively with their insurance companies to better utilize capabilities offered through these new infrastructures.
Web Services, J2EE, .NET-in a nutshell
In layman’s terms Web Services are self-contained software applications that communicate and interact with other applications and/or users via the Internet. Easily accessible, Web Services applications can be used by other computer systems, customers and agents to process work much more efficiently. As the walls that once contained insurance company information systems are brought down, or at least made transparent by Web Services, the resulting environment is one of anytime, anywhere communication and computing.
In one simple statement, Web Services allows the insurance company to easily extend outside their physical locations to communicate and collaborate more effectively with agents and customers through the Internet medium.
J2EE and .NET are the two primary technology choices to create Web Services environments. J2EE (Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition) is a set of standards from Sun Microsystems for developing distributed enterprise applications using the Java programming language. Technology powerhouses such as IBM and BEA have readily adopted J2EE, primarily due to its platform independence-platform independence defined as Java applications that run on any platform from PC to mainframe, and all options in between.
.NET, Microsoft’s version of Web Services, is a suite of software products and models for connecting software applications via the Internet on a common platform-a Microsoft platform. However, .NET applications offer the flexibility of supporting a variety of programming languages.
While carriers, for the most part, may have already chosen their Web Services camp (J2EE or .NET), in their purest form the two options should be able to successfully share Web Services applications. This is of particular importance in the carrier/agent relationship where many carriers, particularly the larger carriers, are adopting J2EE Web Services applications and the agency systems, particularly the small ones, are predominately Microsoft. The ability of J2EE and .NET applications to eventually work together offers nothing but simplicity of operation and benefits to the ultimate user; whether the user is internal or external to the carrier’s operation.
As an agent, why care?
Web Services finally offers the means for all parties and computer systems involved in the insurance industry to work together. From the time a prospective policyholder completes an application, till the time it becomes an in-force policy, to billing, claims handling and renewal; just how many hands and insurance organizations have been involved in the process? From agent, underwriter, claims adjuster, customer service rep, to the billing department; the list is endless.
Since Web Services can offer efficiencies for new business, renewals, persistence and customer service, it is now the business of everyone in the insurance value chain, including the agent, to look for and utilize new approaches to respond to the consumer’s demand for the best insurance coverage with outstanding customer care.
The agent’s ideal insurance process may go something like this: Collect the applicant information and effortlessly convert that information to data to form standard electronic documents. Submit to their carrier or carriers of choice from a single data source on their agency management system. Automatically track these submissions through the insurance companies’ various underwriting and proposal processes. Then “click and resubmit” for additional quote versions needed for proposals and policies being issued.
While much technology focus has centered on the agent/carrier relationship relative to new business submission, this is just the tip of the insurance process iceberg. Agents want to service clients with easy access to up-to-date policy information, facilitate policy transactions like endorsements and amendments, and obtain certificates of insurance, copies of policies, dec pages, bills and forms. It all sounds reasonable in the context of an agent providing the best products and services to their customers. But, what sounds reasonable hasn’t always been easy or even doable … until Web Services.
Insurance companies may want to be “easy for the agent to do business with,” but they are still concerned about making it too easy for an agent to submit multiple proposals to a variety of carriers for “price only” spreadsheet comparisons. The ease of collaboration and quote requests through Web Services can certainly provide agents the more efficient market they desire, but they also offer insurance companies the opportunity to compete based on the “ease of doing business,” not just on price.
Insurance companies also recognize the value in pushing self-service platforms closer to the agent, enabling the agent to directly service the customer in an anywhere, anytime, straight-through-processing computing environment. Carriers are hopping on board to implement these self-service options, aware that these new services reduce operating costs and are faster and more accurate-all made possible through Web Services.
Old technology … a stumbling block
Many of the traditional insurance company legacy systems have been retrofitted in attempts to extend their life and take advantage of the Web paradigm. Unfortunately, these old technology infrastructures weren’t designed with the level of interoperability, data exchange and real-time remote processing that the Web brings to the insurance party. Despite Herculean efforts, most legacy systems cannot be retrofitted or re-configured well enough or quickly enough, if at all, to meet the needs of today’s insurance business and sophisticated consumers.
The legacy technology environment, containing silo’d and disparate systems, creates insurmountable complexity when extended to the Web world-dictating the need for a Web Services solution. In the legacy environment, an agent wishing to service a client may need to access separate billing, policy, claims or underwriting systems. Multiple polices in different lines of business may be contained in yet other systems.
Seasoned insurance company service employees are experts at the system quirks and process exceptions involved in navigating the technology crazy-quilt of legacy systems, processing transactions in required sequences and consolidating information from multiple sources. This
system and process complexity is virtually impossible for an external agent to master, even with Web access to the systems. However, in a total Web Services environment both internal and external users seamlessly interact with all the various databases, leaving the work to the technology rather than the user.
The technology future
Whether the agent is aware of it or not, Web Services is fast becoming part of their everyday landscape. As insurance carriers continue to expand their use of J2EE and .NET and work to replace the legacy systems with new technology platforms, the agent will reap the benefits of the interoperability and easy access to systems and data-all translating to improved customer service and more productive use of agent time and effort.
Ron Lang is director, Insurance Solutions with WorldGroup based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ron can be reached at ron_lang@wgcusa.com or (510) 596-1336.
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