Brian MacLeanSenior Vice President, Select Accounts
Travelers Property & Casualty
Brian MacLean
Senior Vice President, Select Accounts
Travelers Property & Casualty
Learn this big lesson about small business. Without automation, servicing small commercial accounts can be just as difficult as handling larger accounts.
Agents need to shop multiple insurers for the best rates and commercial insurance coverage, and maintain an up-to-date database of risk management information. And without new technology that automates agency/insurer communication, managing this process can be a tremendous burden for agents.
First, new client information needs to be entered into the agency management system. Then, the information needs to be re-entered into one or more insurance company proprietary online quotation systems. Maybe once. Maybe twice. Maybe more, until the agent has found the best combination of coverage and price.
After a policy is issued, data maintenance continues as property values, employment data and other important bits of risk information change. All of the data must be entered into an agency management system and, where appropriate, uploaded to the insurer.
At least, that's the way it used to be. After several years of development, insurers and agency management system vendors are finally beginning to automate this quotation and workflow process with a single entry, multiple company interface (SEMCI) approach, an automated data entry process that allows agents to enter risk information once and transmit the data to multiple insurers simultaneously. New technology allows agents to receive comparative quotes in real time, expediting the marketing process and eliminating the costs of repetition.
The key to this capability is Extensible Markup Language (XML), an Internet programming language that allows Web designers to tag certain kinds of information that can be read and integrated by diverse computer systems that use Web-based technology.
Patrick Kinney
Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Travelers Property & Casualty
By building applications with XML, insurers and other vendors can simultaneously integrate data entered once by agents into multiple functions at diverse sites. Coverage application information, for example, could be entered once in an agency management system and then uploaded to multiple insurers whose XML applications would read the data and plug it into the appropriate areas of their own forms.
Last year, ACORD and the Independent Insurance Agents of America adopted XML as a standard for (SEMCI) functions for agents. This year, agents are finally beginning to see the results of the standard.
In May, the board of directors of ACORD honored Travelers Property & Casualty in Hartford, Connecticut, as the first company to demonstrate real-time data transfer directly from an agency management system using the ACORD XML standard. In June, the company unveiled its first SEMCI and XML-enabled product, Issue Express Net, (IENET) a new integrated small business quotation and service system.
The new system is a 21st century transformation of the company's older online quotation system, according to Brian MacLean, senior vice president of Select Accounts, the Travelers division that markets coverage to small businesses.
Patrick Gee
Vice President, Operations
Travelers Property & Casualty
The new system includes:
*Real-time quoting through agency management systems.
*Internet browser-based real-time quote, rate and issuance.
*Public Web access.
*A comprehensive online service center.
Travelers began automating small business applications more than four years ago with a proprietary version of IENET that was available to 3,000 Travelers agents via dial-up access to an IBM 3270 mainframe computer.
Like other insurers' proprietary systems, the earlier IENET version could not read data directly from an agency management system. Agents needed to enter risk information on a series of the text-based forms that were submitted directly to the system for quotation. The system was based on the ACORD AL3 data standards that were originally designed for mainframe and midrange computers.
The new system features a graphical user interface (GUI) based on Microsoft Windows that is easier to use and more visually consistent with Windows-based personal computer technology, MacLean says. The system is also based on Web technology and the new ACORD XML standard to facilitate SEMCI.
SEMCI applications are designed to eliminate redundant data entry, reduce agents' training and processing costs and help synchronize the flow of information between agents and insurers, MacLean says.
"XML is a lot more flexible than AL3 in the way it identifies and processes information," he continues. "By using XML, data does not need to be entered rigidly in a specific form. Each application reads information tagged with XML and inserts it in the correct area of its own form."
IENET also allows agents whose Applied Systems WinTAM software is WARP-enabled to achieve real-time access on selected policies beginning with the Travelers MasterPac Business Owners Policy. Travelers plans to add coverage options throughout the year; workers compensation and commercial auto coverage should be available by the end of the year. Travelers also plans to expand access to other agency management systems later this year.
"This new capability places us far ahead on the road to a more streamlined policy application issuance system for independent agents," MacLean says. "This effort underscores our ongoing commitment to support ACORD standards and the development of SEMCI solutions with agency software providers."
The system is also consistent with Applied Systems' long-term development plans, says its chairman and chief executive officer James P. Kellner. "We feel that moving forward in the global world of insurance e-commerce, the independent agent will experience tremendous growth through the implementation of electronic business-to-business transactions, as the most efficient sales, marketing and service channel. This is our total focus and commitment to the industry."
The integrated system also features the Travelers Service Center, which functions as an extension of an agency's servicing operations, says MacLean. The service center provides various levels of customer service which agents can access 24 hours a day through the system. The Service Center was originally launched in 1998 as part of the original proprietary IENET.
By the end of the year, agents will also be able to provide selected customers with direct access to the service center, adds Patrick Kinney, vice president of sales and marketing for Travelers Select Accounts. "This self-service function will allow customers to take responsibility for the management of their own risk information, giving them more control and reducing some of the information management burden on agents," he says.
The new Issue Express Net system also allows agents to link directly to the company's quote, rate and issuance system without an agency management system over the public Internet. Agents can use a standard Internet browser to access the service at the Travelers Web site (www.travelers.com).
Direct Internet access adds a new degree of flexibility. Agents can use the direct access from any location with Internet access, notes Patrick Gee, vice president of operations for Select Accounts and Travelers personal lines. As a result, they can generate quotes and coverage applications while meeting with customers in their offices, at trade shows or any other place where business is conducted. Gee expects that the company will begin issuing polices online sometime next year.
Haskell Brokerage Corp. in New York City was one of 100 agencies that participated in a pilot project of the new IENET. A Travelers agent for more than 15 years, the commercial agency had been using the older proprietary system to quote and place small business coverage, says Vice President Andrew M. Bass.
Small business coverage has been a steadily growing line of business for the agency for the past four years, Bass explains, creating a need for efficiency and automation. The original IENET system was helpful, but not particularly easy to learn.
"It was not a particularly intuitive system," he says. "It took a significant amount of training to get our employees comfortable with the data entry screens and the upload process. It wasn't that it was so difficult, but it took practice. We had to get good at it," he recalls.
In March, the agency began to test the new Web-based system using a single personal computer and a dial-up modem with 56K bps Internet access. The results were not satisfactory in the beginning, Bass says. The entry process and the new interface for direct Web access worked well at the agency end, but the link to the insurer was too slow to suit the agency.
"I liked the interface. The screens were more natural and easier to understand and you could point and click to make any information changes, but the system itself was slower than the version we started with in 1997," Bass says. "The problem was our Internet connection."
A month later, the agency upgraded its Internet access to a speedy partial T1 network and the change was dramatic, Bass says. "Once we improved our access, the system was wonderful. Not only does the system move faster and more efficiently than before, the whole IENET service has been valuable in improving our overall workflow.
"We've been able to generate proposals for new business more efficiently, printing the quotation results and coverage terms directly from the computer screen for presentation to our customers. And the system is much easier to learn for our employees. What used to take a week of training now takes a few hours," Bass says.
Travelers began to roll out the new IENET in June to all 5,000 agents in 90 cities, installing the system and training in groups of 300 agents. MacLean says the company expects to have the system available to 90% of its agents by the end of this year. *
The author
Len Strazewski is a Chicago- based freelance writer specializing in marketing, management and technology topics. In addition to Rough Notes, he has written on insurance for Business Insurance, the Chicago Tribune and Human Resource Executive, among other publications.